Troubled Silence
by PyrothTenka
Summary: Bumblebee thought it would be easy. Just go in, grab the artifact and leave. How was he supposed to know the artifact wasn't an 'it' but a 'she', and what did this portend for the other artifacts the Autobots had detected? A hodge-podge AU of my own making with many hat tips to various continuities. Rated T for Lamborghinis and robot space chickens.
1. Chapter the first

**A/N:** Just a quick note to say I don't own Transformers or any of their lovely characters that have so inspired me to write. Haydn, however, is mine. Rawr. You can't have her.

Oh, and I'd like to give a shout out to Vaeru for writing the lovely fic Juxtaposition that so inspired me to write a transformers' fic of my own. Go read it. And its sequel. And all its yummy little ficlets!

Also to those who have selective mutism or other such anxiety disorders, I am in no way attempting to offend anyone and I apologize if I do so. I myself suffer from an anxiety disorder, and this story is an attempt to show the strength in quiet people that might otherwise go unnoticed, not an attempt to make fun of them.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my writing, please drop a review in the review box on your way out. :3 Oh, and if someone would like to volunteer to be my beta and help me find all my missing commas, I would be very grateful.

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**Chapter 1****: Chapter the first**

She didn't have to look up to know the cashier was staring at her as she fidgeted nervously in front of the register. It would be good practice, her therapist had assured her, attempting to work with her disability and attempt to do things normal people would. Ordering a meal at Burger Palace seemed normal enough. Even when she had to work up the courage to just hand a note with her order on it to the register and not even be able to make eye contact. Yeah, she was that messed up.

_Baby steps... _she reminded herself. The cashier finally finished reading the card attached to the note and then the note itself before pushing buttons on the register awkwardly. "So that's one number three, no cheese and a small ice water... Haydn?"

Haydn nodded quickly, placing a five on the counter as the cashier handed her her paper and card back. The cashier swiftly counted out the change with an ease that came with practice, and Haydn accepted it, sliding away silently from the till. She found a booth in the most out-of-the-way corner possible and sat down to stare at the card her therapist had given her to help her be able to do more things on her own. It read:

**Hello, my name is Haydn. I have a social anxiety disorder that prevents me from speaking in public. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience and sincerely thank you for your patience and understanding.**

On the back of the card were a list of important phone numbers people could call if she had a real emergency she needed help with. She and her doctor had worked together to word the card right, though Haydn still fretted that it would make people angry with her. She didn't like making people angry. They always seemed to think she was rude when she wouldn't meet their eyes or respond to them. She wanted to reply. She wanted to talk like everyone else, she just couldn't open her mouth or get the words out unless she knew them.

She reached up to finger the spherical pendant she had around her neck. Her grandfather had given it to her when she was little. It was barely larger than one of those large marbles, but it was pretty dense, maybe metal, and the weight felt comforting around her neck. Like an anchor of stability in her otherwise chaotic life. It was her own personal good luck charm. Not to mention it kept the headaches away, even if her therapist insisted that was all in her head.

She took out the pen she always carried in her bag and wrote a quick 'Thank you' on her pocket notepad while she waited for her order. Please and Thank you were very important to her, her grandfather had always stressed them to be the two most important words in the world. Since he'd passed on, she always tried to keep his memory alive through liberal uses of 'please' and 'thank you'. Even if she could only write them. She tore the note off just as her order was called and dropped it on the counter before she lost her nerve. She scooped up her bag and walked swiftly toward the exit.

Once outside, she took a deep calming breath and began walking home. She did it, she smiled to herself, she'd successfully done something normal people did. Even if she had to do it without speaking. She hadn't had a panic attack either. She took out her cell phone and began texting her therapist about it. Dr. Ross had told her she should tell her of any attempts she'd made, successful or otherwise, to overcome her disorder. She was very supportive.

She was almost home by the time she'd hit 'send'. She lived in a student housing complex not far from the college she was attending. Dr. Ross had set her up with a course of entirely internet classes and sent an email to the professors to get her excused from the group work if it became too stressful. She was still to attempt to do group discussions online, she was just allowed to excuse herself if it became overwhelming.

Her therapist had even helped her find a good roommate to live with. Tabetha was a senior studying psychology and was writing a paper on people with selective mutism, like Haydn. She positively jumped at the chance to have one as a roommate. Haydn didn't mind being studied. She liked helping people and it made her feel useful to be able to do something for someone that her mutism wouldn't get in the way of. Besides, Tabby always shared her thoughts and opinions on things and Haydn liked being able to understand herself and her difficulties better.

When Haydn walked into their shared apartment, Tabetha poked her head out of the kitchen. "How'd it go?"

Haydn held up the bag with a shy smile, and Tabetha grinned and clapped her hands excitedly.

"That's great, Haydn! So the card helped?"

Haydn nodded.

"That's wonderful, be sure to put it down in your journal as soon as possible, alright?"

Again she nodded and proceeded to sit down with her burger and water at the table. She had a journal she kept for Tabby's research. Haydn wrote in it everyday and afterwards would go through and black out any parts she didn't want read, and underline anything she didn't want Tabetha to put in her paper for others to read.

Dinner was nice, and afterward Haydn went upstairs to write in her journal and do some homework to send to her online professors. All in all it had been a good day.

The next morning promised to be good as well. Tabetha was already in class by the time Haydn was out of the shower at eight in the morning. Haydn packed a quick breakfast and lunch in her backpack with a bottle of water, her laptop and few other things she would need before she returned later that evening. She was going to try and spend the entire day out and about. Go to the library, maybe the park for a bit. It was very liberating having a laptop on a college campus with wifi wherever she went.

It was a nice spring day she thought to herself as she locked up the apartment. She glanced across the parking lot at the shiny new bright yellow Camaro one of their neighbors had bought just a few days ago. It was by far the most noticeable car in the whole lot. The license plate made her giggle inside too. BMBLBEE. It even looked like a bee with the black racing stripes down its middle.

She sighed, almost wishing she could drive, but thoughts of the lines and people at the DMV quickly drove that desire from her mind. She sincerely doubted she could handle that kind of social situation in her current circumstances. She gave one final backwards glance at the bright yellow car before continuing on to where she would cross the street to the library.

The campus library was nice, though she wished their fiction section was just a bit larger. She loved fantasy stories like the ones her grandfather used to read to her. She missed her grandfather, she didn't remember anything about her parents, her mother died giving birth to her and her father ran off afterwards, unwilling to take care of a child by himself. Her grandfather raised her, and she had a lot of fun. Now she was on her own, at least as best as she could manage. Tabby and Dr. Ross helped her when they could.

She found an interesting book with dragons and magic and checked it out before finding a quiet corner to curl up and read. It must have been a really good book because she read clear through lunch and only stopped because her stomach was beginning to complain loudly. She took her book outside to eat in the park and then got lost in it again. She was addicted to a good story.

She woke up hours later, having fallen asleep in the nice warm sunshine. The sun was no longer shining, and she was out way past the time she had meant to come home. Tabby was going to be so worried! She scrambled to her feet, brushing leaves and grass off her clothes as the rolled up the blanket she was lying on and began packing her things.

The sun was set, a glimmer of pink and purples highlighted the clouds to west. At least it was light out still, if barely. Last time she'd fallen asleep somewhere it was dark when she woke up. Fortunately that had only been across the street from her complex. Now she was a few blocks away, and it wasn't safe for a girl to be walking home alone past dark.

As if summoned by her thoughts, a car drove up and stopped in the road between her and her appartment. It was a police cruiser. She frowned uncertainly, had she done something wrong? Did the police need to speak with her? Oh, this could be bad. She swallowed nervously, feeling the beginnings of an anxiety attack. She took deep calming breaths and fumbled through her bag for her card.

The passenger side door opened eerily of its own accord and a oddly metallic voice spoke from the driver. "You're out late. Need a ride home?"

Haydn shook her head, and moved to walk around the car. It pulled in front of her, making an odd growl-like engine sound. "Get in, meatbag." Now the voice sounded threatening.

She turned to run, her anxiety attack beginning to turn into a panic attack. This was no policeman! She didn't know what this was...

Something snagged her ankle and she tripped, bruising her knee and elbow on the fall. She looked down to see a metallic cable wrapped around her foot, it began pulling her toward the open vehicle. If she could have screamed, she would have.

The low rumble of another engine was all the warning the police car received before it was rear-ended by another car. Haydn looked up as the cable released her and whipped back to strike the familiar yellow camaro. The police car's passenger door slammed shut as well. There was an exchange of revving engines that sounded almost like snarls, but Haydn didn't stick around. She pushed herself to her feet and dodged around the two cars toward her apartment.

Her ankle throbbed in time with her step, but she was too numb to feel the pain. She needed to get home. To the familiar four walls of her room. Did that police car just attack her? Why would it do that? How could it do that?

She didn't stop running until she was in her apartment, slamming and bolting the door behind her. She gasped for air, trying to remember her breathing exercises while her head spun trying to make sense of what had just happened.

"Haydn, sweetie, are you alright?"

She looked up into the worried eyes of Tabetha, her anxieties made her glance away quickly. She wasn't alright, a police car had just attacked and tried to kidnap her! Tabby would never believe her, Haydn hardly believed it herself. She turned around to look out the front window to check for signs of the cars fighting each other.

Outside was a disturbingly quiet night. The yellow Camaro from before was parked in the exact same spot she'd seen it in this morning. There was no sign of a police cruiser anywhere. Perhaps she had just imagined it? Her throbbing ankle protested otherwise. Grimacing in pain, the adrenaline wearing off, Haydn limped to the bathroom. She heard Tabetha follow.

"What happened? Did you fall?" Tabby asked, pulling the first aid kit out of the cabinet in the hall. Haydn nodded, propping her foot up on the edge of the bath, sitting on the toilet seat. Tabby handed her astringent and bandages for the scrapes on her hands.

"Poor dear, looks like a nasty spill! I'm glad you made it home alright. Next time text me instead of walking with your ankle like that," she scolded, leaving to get something cold out of the freezer.

Coming back with a bag of frozen peas and a dish towel, Tabby helped her limp across the hall to Haydn's room. She set her up on the bed with her foot elevated and laptop in reach while she took out a wrap for the ankle. "These red marks... did you catch your foot in a rope or something?"

Haydn shrugged in a 'kind of like that' manner, settling her pillow in a comfortable position behind her. She didn't know what else she could tell Tabby, she hardly knew what happened herself. Cars were not supposed to attack people.

"Well, I think that's what we'll do for now. I'll check it in the morning and take you to the doctor's if it's still pretty bad. Have you eaten yet?" Tabby asked, leaning on the door frame thoughtfully. Haydn shook her head. She'd read and slept through dinner.

"I'll go reheat some of that leftover lasagna then, alright? Text me if you need anything," Tabetha instructed. She waited for Haydn to nod a confirmation before retreating to the kitchen. Finally she could go on forgetting the crazy hallucinations of the day. Or maybe she dreamt it all when she fell asleep in the park? Either way, she just wanted to forget it all. Then her phone went off.

It was probably Dr. Ross, she thought as she fished it out of her jeans pocket. It wasn't, it was some a text from some number she'd never seen before. Maybe some advertisement spam text? She didn't really believe that. Hesitantly, she opened it.

**You're still in danger, you need to leave. Come outside and get in the yellow Camaro, I'll take you someplace safe.**

There was no name signed on it, and Haydn stared down at the phone. Tears of panic came to her and she could feel herself begin to hyperventilate. How-? Why-? The questions blurred in a nonsensical mush in her mind. Another message came right after it.

**You don't have much time. They're sending someone in after you. I can't help you if you don't come outside. Hurry!**

She slammed the phone shut and dropped it on the bed beside her. They were sending someone in here? Who? Her mind was a jumble of panic and confusion, but somewhere along the way her mind decided she would pack. She still didn't know if she was going to go out or not, it could be a trap, but at least she could pack bag just in case.

Fortunately most everything was in arms reach. She shoved her laptop back into her bag that was still packed from the day. She pulled out her heavy text books she'd brought just in case she felt like studying, and was just fishing her phone out of her blankets when movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. In the tree outside her window, red glowing eyes gleamed maliciously at her.


	2. Squishy

**A/N -** I do not own Transformers or any of its characters. Haydn is mine.Also, I'm terrible at naming chapters. : / Please excuse my craziness. That is all. Enjoy!

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**Chapter 2: For our next trick, we will now saw Bumblebee in half! ... ewww, who knew rainbow blood was so disturbing?**

Haydn bolted for the door, nearly stumbling as her first step jarred her injured ankle. She heard the crash of breaking glass as she slammed her bedroom door shut behind her. She didn't stop, using a wall or chair for support as she hobbled her way to the front. The sounds of splintering wood spurred her to go faster. Whatever it was was making quick work of the door.

She came into the front shared kitchen living area, Tabetha was coming around the dividing counter. "What was all that noise?!" she questioned, alarm thick in her voice.

Haydn didn't reply, she lunged forward intent on grabbing Tabby's arm on her way to the doorway when something metal, traveling very fast, went shooting past Haydn's shoulder. A metal blade about four inches long imbedded itself in Tabetha's forehead. She crumpled instantly to the floor.

Haydn almost stumbled in her shock, but something inside made her keep going and scramble for the doorway. A voice like scraping metal chuckled cruelly from behind her. **"**_No witnessessss... hehehe..."_

Haydn managed to get the door open, and glancing back as she slammed the door she caught a glimpse of what was chasing her. The creature was completely metal from tip to tip. It was barely three feet in length and had four appendages tipped with three claw like blades. It had large glowing eyes and a mouth full of razor-like teeth. It was launching itself straight at her from the far wall when Haydn slammed the door in it's face. There was a loud crunch of metal impacting wood, and bladed claws jutted through from the other side, but Haydn was already limping to the stairs, leaning heavily on the railing.

In the parking lot below an engine roared to life. Haydn looked down to see the yellow Camaro launch out of its parking spot and jump the curb to come to a screeching halt with expert precision right at the base of the stairs; door open, waiting. She half stumbled the rest of the way down the stairs, but caught her arm on the railing and pulled herself to a stop when she saw there was no driver in the car.

By now neighbors were shouting and poking their heads out of their doors to see what all the noise was about. There were no signs that the metal creature thing had come out the front door with her, though she didn't know why, and she now had time to think that getting into a strange car with no driver was probably not the best idea in the world.

She was saved the trouble of deciding when the glove compartment popped open and out came those same metallic cables that had come out of the police car. This time she was too injured to get away as the cables wrapped around her wrist and waist to pull her into the car.

"Sorry, Squishy, we don't have time for me to ask nicely. Trust me, you do _not_want to be caught by the other guys." The voice came out of nowhere as the seat belts came to life to strap her firmly in place. The doors slammed, metal cables receded and the tires squealed loudly as the car spun around, with enough force to make Haydn almost black out, and shot out of the parking lot. "Hold on, this is going to be a rough ride."

The steering wheel, gear shift and mirrors all moved on their own as the car sped toward the highway with no regard for traffic laws. In the middle of the dashboard in front of her was a monitor that flashed between different angles of the area around them. The view from behind came up and Haydn could see the flashing lights of a police cruiser behind them.

"Ha! Like that rusted scrap heap could catch me," the voice in the car scoffed.

She brought her one good leg up so she could bury her face in her knee, a soft whimper escaping as she fought to breathe. So much was happening all at once she needed to shut it out before it overwhelmed her. Breathe, she told herself, focus on breathing first.

"Squishy? You alright? Don't worry, I'm the best driver this side of the galaxy. I could lose old Barricade with half my processor running... woah-!" The last part was punctuated by a screeching of brakes that threw Haydn forward against her restraints. The force knocked the wind out of her and she immediately started coughing and sputtering for air.

"Scrap, he's got back-up. Stupid drones... if I were in combat mode...," the car muttered, his tone holding threats of violence toward the odd black and purple cars that had appeared in front of them. The Camaro used the force of its brakes to swing its nose around at a ninety degree angle, and left a trail of smoke and skid marks behind as it rocketed off in another direction. "It's okay, I still got this... you still with me?"

Predictably, Haydn didn't answer as she returned her attention to breathing. It was incredibly difficult while being jostled by the car and strapped in tightly with unyielding seatbelts. She tugged on her restraints and to her surprise they loosened just a bit. Enough to breathe easier.

"You're, uh, making some really unusual sounds there, Squishy. Please tell me you're not going to terminate? Prowl's going to be really angry if I accidentally kill a human... I'm already going to be in enough trouble as it is!"

When Haydn didn't answer this time, the voice lapsed into silence. Though, she did notice the ride became somewhat smoother. They slowed down more for turns and a took a bit longer to change speeds. Which was a relief, because Haydn had been afraid she might black out with all the force that was being applied to her.

With her breathing somewhat under control, Haydn looked up to see what was going on. She regretted it almost immediately. They were zipping along surface streets, dodging in and out of traffic, buildings, people... multiple times police tried to chase them but only one cruiser kept up with them. Even when their way to the freeway kept getting blocked by odd black and purple cars and the Camaro was forced to change directions.

"That's it," the voice commented after a while. "I have to break through the next blockade or else they'll catch us. Hold on, alright? It's going to get very rough."

Ahead of them, Haydn could see the upcoming freeway entrance, again those purple-black cars blocked the way, but there was possibly just enough room between the two of them they might be able to force their way through. The car must have thought the same thing, because it began accelerating up into the triple digits.

At the last possible moment, before there was any hope of changing directions, the two twin cars popped blades out of their sides right across their path. "Oh scra-!"

Haydn covered her eyes but couldn't block out the screech of metal rending metal as the razor sharp projections sliced their way deep into the sides of the car. However, that was nothing compared to the shriek of pain that reverberated through the car. Shocked, Haydn began to realize that the voice wasn't just someone remote controlling the car from afar, the voice _was_the car!

The screen in the dash split in two, the left side becoming a small replica of the car with various colors and labels in a language she didn't understand. She could only assume it was displaying the damage. It didn't look good. The right side of the screen still displayed different views of around them. Currently it was focused on the sides where the damage was. It did not look pretty.

The good news was they were on the freeway, finally; the bad news, the car was leaking fluids of all sorts of colors and they looked important. There was a deep gash stretching the full length of the car on each side.

"Ow, ow, ow... that was... very bad. Now Ratchet is going to have my chassis strung up as well as Prowl! Ugh- if we even make it that far," the voice grunted. They were slowing, and some parts on the left side of the screen were flashing a dangerous bright red. "Sorry, Squishy. This isn't looking good."

Not knowing what else to do, Haydn reached out a hand to pat the dashboard in an attempt to thank the car for trying, or possibly to comfort it, she wasn't sure which. When her fingers touched the car, an electric shock ran down her arm and into the car. She pulled back her hand in alarm, but there was only a sensation of quickly fading pins and needles. The shock, however, broke apart into bits of white lightning that danced across the dashboard and out of sight.

Motion on the screen caused Haydn to look over at it. The white lightning had traveled to the gashes along the sides of the car and fused with them, causing the metal to grow and well... heal, for lack of a better word in Haydn's mind, together. The readouts on the the left side changed color rapidly from red to green, and in moments there was no sign the car had ever been damaged on either screen.

"Wow... I guess I know what the artifact does now," the car muttered in awe. "Time to get out of here."

Behind them the sound of sirens had begun to grow louder with proximity, and the two black cars from before had been gradually gaining on them. Now, as the car shifted gears and went into full throttle, they quickly left it all behind. The voice had not been kidding about being the best driver this side of the galaxy.

Haydn stared down at her hand wonderingly. She'd never done _that_before. Artifact? Talking cars? Little metal monsters that threw blades? And Tabby... oh, Tabby...

Haydn wasn't particularly religious but she said a quick prayer for her friend anyway. Just in case. Now that she was no longer distracted trying to stay alive, she could mourn for her friend properly. She sobbed softly into her good knee. She was going to have nightmares about this night for the rest of her life.

Her phone went off and she pulled it out of her jacket pocket. It was another text from that unknown number, she stole a glance at the screen in the dashboard before opening it.

**You're leaking. Should I be worried?**

Haydn hesitated before typing out a reply. **No, I'm just crying because I'm sad. :'( They killed my friend, Tabetha. Uhm... who is this, by the way?**

"Aha! So you _can_communicate...," the voice cheered, then went silent and Haydn received another text.

**I'm Bumblebee. What's your name? Sorry I couldn't do anything to help your friend. I'm a little big to fit inside your tiny box buildings. What does ":'(" mean?**

Bumblebee, the name made Haydn think of the license plate. **My name is Haydn. I have problems talking in front of people I don't know. Sorry. D: (It's a face, the ':' is eyes and if you turn it sideways it's like a facial expression. To help put emotion in writing. ':'(' is a crying sad face.) Where are we going, and why are scary talking cars chasing me?**

**Nice to meet you, Haydn. You can't talk in front of new people? That must be really difficult. D: (Like that?) I'm taking you back to base where our chief mechanic can have a look at you and figure out why you're projecting matrix energy like an artifact. We thought the artifact was going to be an object, not an organic. That's why Barricade was after you as well.**

Just as Haydn finished reading, another message came right after it continuing on.

**The others won't be expecting you and I'll probably be in trouble. We have very strict regulations regarding contact with other lifeforms. We're supposed to stay hidden, but Barricade was going to take you if I didn't, and I know you're better off with me than him.**

Haydn took a moment to process that. Matrix energy? She didn't feel like she was giving off any energy. Other than that white lightning from before, anyway. She shifted slightly to find a more comfortable position and accidentally bumped her swollen ankle with her other foot. She grimaced. Without ice to place over it, the injury was quickly swelling to the size of a baseball. Unable to do anything about it, she went back to texting with Bumblebee the talking car.

**How long until we get there? **she asked.

**We have to make a stop first, to rendezvous with my partner. He went to investigate another suspicious signal that could be an artifact. We're not really supposed to split up like this, but when the signal split into two signals we had to improvise. The rendezvous is about 2 hours away, I don't know how long we will need to wait there for him. It's possible he's already there waiting for me.**

**Is your partner another talking car like you?**

**Sort of? We're not just talking cars, you know. You'll see. Blue probably won't stay in vehicle mode once he gets there.**

That sounded rather ominous, but Haydn set it aside to maybe ask about later. She didn't think she could handle even more confusion at that moment. **Could we stop at a rest stop somewhere along the way? I haven't eaten since noon, and I'll probably need some water too. **

There was a pause, which was noticeable because up until then Bumblebee's replies had come more or less instantly.

**If I let you out, will you come back?**

A chill ran down Haydn's spine. She had forgotten she'd been all but kidnapped. It hadn't occurred to her recently that she might not be allowed to leave.

**Yeah. It's not like I could get very far with my ankle like this anyway.**

There also wasn't anywhere to run to around here. The Camaro's blatant disregard for speed limits had taken them clear out of the city. There was only a smattering of gas stations and fast food joints along the highway to represent civilization.

**You're damaged? D: Scrap, Ratchet is going to have my optics. I don't know how much he knows about human repair. I'll take the next rest stop, you can get what you need.**

Satisfied, Haydn turned to stare absentmindedly out the window at the passing landscape.


	3. Talking cars with exploding lasers

**A/N - **I do not own Transformers or any of its lovely giant death robots from space. I do own Haydn.

Oh look, reviews! I am loved. To answer the main question about continuity, I assure you I am far too crazy to stick with a single universe. This is a mish-mash of what I decided I liked best and threw out what I didn't like. Hopefully you guys enjoy it as much as I do. Sorry this chapter is short. D:

Oh, and this once per day posting thing is just until I catch up to where I have written. I have all the way up to chapter 10 written and after that I will probably slow down. So, until then, be spoiled. -Py

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**Chapter 3: I present to you Bluestreak, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, I know, silver is not in fact blue. Now shush and enjoy your story.**

Bumblebee was as good as his word, taking the next exit that had the blue 'rest stop' sign. It was one with a really long windy road that took them far from the freeway. They were the only ones there, it being late for normal people, and too early for truck drivers to be stopping to sleep. It was fairly bare bones. Restrooms, a couple of vending machines and some drinking fountains. A large road map hung under the single light on the front of the building. Now all Haydn had to do was get from the parking area to the building. On her ankle.

Haydn stared reluctantly at the black top as the door opened and seatbelt retracted. The fresh air smelled good though, that was something. Oh hey, they had a refrigerated beverages vending machine, finally something cold for her ankle.

She eased herself up, using the door for support. It wasn't a long walk, she'd be okay. Her steps were slow, and every other step sent knives up her leg, but she could manage. She needed to use the bathroom first, then she could browse the vending machines. Good thing she made a habit of keeping cash on her.

The vending machines were like a treasure hunt, there were all sorts of useful things in there. Energy drinks, Tums... Advil! Yes! Pain killers very yes! She couldn't get the bottle open fast enough once it tumbled out of the machine. She grabbed a few granola bars, some trail mix, four bottles of water and loaded it all into her backpack. She then hobbled back to the car, the door opening on its own before she could touch it.

"Yeesh, it's painful just watching you, Squishy," Bumblebee muttered as she slid inside. "You're sure it's nothing serious?"

Haydn shrugged as she climbed into the back, somewhat awkwardly, to be where she could lie her leg out flat. She placed the still cold bottles around her ankle, before getting out her phone to formulate a proper reply to Bumblebee. The seatbelts came to life and strapped her in before the car took off.

**It's just a minor sprain. Painful, but not life threatening. There was Advil in the machine back there, it should help reduce the swelling.**

**And that's good, right?**

**Yes. Good. I should be fine in a week or so. Thank you for your help. I'm probably going to fall asleep after I finish eating. **

**Asleep meaning go offline? To recharge?**

**Yes. Recharge. Something like that.**

She closed the phone, sticking it in a pocket before settling herself in as comfortably as she could manage for sleep. She was already half-way through a bag of trail mix. She didn't remember finishing it before losing consciousness.

Haydn was awakened with a shock when Bumblebee swerved so suddenly, it dumped her propped up leg off the seat and sent fresh bolts of pain shooting up her leg. The swerve was immediately accompanied by a thunder-like explosion that rocked the whole car.

"Sorry, Squishy, we've got company. Of the airborne variety. Fortunately Thundercracker couldn't hit the large side of a gestalt. Unfortunately the chances of me losing him are pretty slim in this flat terrain," the Camaro told her.

Haydn craned her neck around to see what he was talking about and spotted a military jet, no less, speeding toward them to make another pass. The bewilderment must have shown on her face because Bumblebee went on to explain.

"Did I forget to mention not all of us are cars? Whoops. Great, we were already close to the rendezvous, now I gotta swing around and find a city to lose him in. This'll add hours to our-"

A flash of light lit up the sky like lightning, and only because Haydn was watching the oncoming jet did she see the bolt of light come out of nowhere and explode on impact with the plane's cockpit. It spun wildly out of control for a moment before righting itself, turning on one wing, and speeding away from them as fast as its jets would allow.

"Haha! And that, my little squishy, is why Bluestreak is such an amazing partner. Did you see that shot? Nice! Thunderhead is going to be in the med bay for days after that... "

Haydn already had her phone in hand and was tapping out a reply. **Your partner is a talking car that can shoot exploding lasers?! O_o (This one you don't turn sideways, it's a surprised face.)**

"Well... not exactly..."

"Bee!" another voice resonated through the car. "Are you all right? I was just looking at the road, 'cause I know-"

"Blue-"

"-I'd see you for miles from up there, 'cause you're the stand-out kind of bright yellow, and I saw you coming with 'Cracker on your tail, so-"

"Blue?"

"-I tried to get him in my sights, but you were still so far away and he was moving fast, but he got a shot at you so I had to take my shot and I hit him! He didn't get you did he? I told-"

"Blue!"

"-you we shouldn't have split up! Jazz and 'Hide are going to chain us up and use us for target practice! And that's not including wha- Great Primus, Bee! Is that an organic in your cargo hold?!"

All while the new voice had been rambling, a bright spot of headlights on the horizon had been rapidly growing closer until it performed an impossible screeching u-turn that brought the gleaming silver Nissan Fairlady Z alongside them. On the last words, the Nissan fish-tailed in what Haydn could only assume was surprise before straightening out.

"Why, yes it is, Blue. As I was trying to tell you, this is Haydn. Haydn, this is my partner Bluestreak. I probably should have warned you, he's a bit of a motor-mouth."

"Uh, hi, Haydn. Nice to meet you."

Now came that awkward silence that always followed when someone expected a reply from her but all she did was stare down into her lap, hands clasped tightly around her phone. She hated it.

"She doesn't talk, Blue. You have to use the communicator device she has. She can hear us just fine, though. Oh, and would you mind taking her from here? I want my hands free in case we get ambushed or something."

Haydn stiffened and flipped her phone open. **I can't stay with you? D: **

The Camaro chuckled. "It's just not practical, Squishy. Blue's got thicker armor, and while he's a crack shot, he's not much in melee."

"It's true," the Nissan agreed. "Bee's a much better fighter than I am. There was this one time back on-"

"Blue," Bumblebee interrupted before he could get on a roll. "We'll take the next rest stop and you can take Haydn then."

"Ok. Now can you explain why you have an organic? You were supposed to get the artifact, not grab the human carrying it."

While Bumblebee launched into a narrative of what happened, Haydn's phone went off with another text message from the the number Bumblebee used.

**Like this?**

Another message came right after it, seemingly from the same number.

**Yep. Though if we both use the same ID things could get confusing fast. Here, I'll fix it.**

Instantly the number changed into the name 'Bumblebee' as if she'd added it to her contact list, and another text conversation opened up under the name 'Bluestreak' with a different number. Apparently the talking cars could hack her phone. Lovely.

**Hey, quit changing things on my phone without asking me. D:, **she scolded Bee.

**Bee: Sorry, I'll stop. Just wanted to make things easier.**

**Blue: What does 'D:' mean? Oh, and hi, Haydn! Don't worry, you'll be safe with me. I'm not scary, I promise.**

**Bee: Read the rest of the conversation, Blue, they're faces. As for 'not scary', I wouldn't make that promise if I were you. I've been in vehicle mode the whole time.**

**Blue: Oh. I see. 'Talking car that can shoot exploding lasers'. That is... kind of true. But I'm still not scary. D:**

Haydn closed her phone and set it on the seat beside her. Having two different conversations going on around her on top of meeting a new person was just too much to handle. She'd had less than two hours of sleep, a swollen throbbing ankle, and had almost died multiple times during the night. She needed some down time. Badly.

The two cars fell silent and her phone stopped ringing as she leaned her head against the car's interior and closed her eyes. She was just starting to doze off when she noticed them slowing down and eventually come to a halt. The rest stop... switching cars... right...

Bee was saying something, but she was too bleary to understand, just assuming he was telling her it was time to transfer over. She picked up her bag and climbed out of the open door, leaning on it for support. She took a step and landed poorly on her injured foot, causing her to stumble.

Before she could fall, something caught her around the waist. It lifted her off her feet, which was a relief to not be required to walk anymore, and pulled her into another car. The seat she was placed in reclined automatically, as if reading her mind, and the seatbelt fastened in place without her touching it. Her curiosity almost made her stir enough to look around the interior of the new car, but then the seat warmers kicked in and she was quickly lulled into oblivion.


	4. How many heart attacks can we give Haydn

**A/N - **I still do not own Transformers or it's giant death robots from space. Haydn is still mine.

Ty to Starcee138 for beta-ing for me. :3 Yay!

Also funny conversation I had with a friend the other day:

**me:** There are loud clicky bugs outside my window. .  
**friend:** Cicadas you mean?  
**me:** I dunno... probably...  
**friend:** Decepticon Cicada  
**me:** O.o KILL IT!  
**friend:** "So you click at enemys?" "SILENCE HUMAN WORM." *Steps on*  
**me:** XD  
**friend:** And that was how my Transformers story began and ended.

Anyway, just thought I would share! Now go enjoy your chapter...

* * *

**Chapter 4: Follow that white rabbit, Alice! Wait... Except this is Haydn. And it's a... not-blue Bluestreak? I'm confused. What was I saying again...?**

When Haydn woke up, she stared around at the unfamiliar car in confusion. This wasn't Tabby's twelve year old beat up Honda. What was she doing in some other person's car? Some other person's very nice car, even. She glanced out the windows but that only increased her confusion.

The car was parked in a very large metal room. It looked like a bedroom for a giant out of a science fiction novel. There was a solid metal bunk, and a desk with a large keyboard and monitor built into it and a giant sized chair to go with it. On the wall were a few computer panels that Haydn couldn't make heads or tails of, and in the corner was some metallic sculpture of a plant. At least, that's what she thought it was.

She was in the process of wondering where she'd twisted her ankle when the events of last night came back to her. She stared at the dashboard of the now familiar silver Nissan Z and wondered if maybe her memories of talking cars wasn't just a dream or hallucination or something. She looked over to where her phone rested in the driver seat next to her, and picked it up. The front showed she had unread messages, and she opened it uncertainly.

**Blue: Did I say something wrong?**

**Bee: I'm not sure... did we? Sorry, Squishy. :(**

Oh. Left over from the conversation last night probably. She felt bad making them feel bad, and she gave the motionless dashboard another glance before formulating a message.

**Sorry about last night. I was really tired and sometimes I just can't handle too much social interaction going on around me. Especially when it involves meeting new people. You guys didn't say anything wrong.**

She set it up to send to both numbers, but didn't really expect it to work since she had absolutely no signal. It did send, and about three seconds later she got a reply.

**Blue: That's alright, Ratchet explained to us that 'your sensors were overloaded and you needed time to reboot'. He's been doing research on human repair, among other things. Are you feeling better now?**

**Yeah, I am. Thanks for letting me sleep in here, I hope I didn't mess up anything. Where are we, and where's Bee?**

**Blue: No problem, I don't mind at all. We are in my quarters at base, and Bee is on his way here.**

**Your quarters? O_o But everything here looks like it was made for some metal giant! How does a car sit in a chair at a desk?**

There was a pause longer than three seconds before this reply came, and Haydn frowned. All of Bluestreak's replies had come precisely three seconds after she'd sent hers. Almost as if he was adding the time on purpose. Last night the replies had come practically by the time she'd pressed the send button. This pause, though, was particularly unnerving.

**Blue: Well... that's something we meant to tell you about last night before you went offline. Bee is coming to explain it whenever you're ready. It's going to be quite a shock to your system, so take some time to prepare first.**

Haydn bit her lip nervously, afraid to even let herself imagine what Blue was talking about. Instead, she reached into her bag to fish out the Advil she'd bought the other day, and to grab a breakfast of granola bar. She didn't know what she could do to prepare, so taking care of a few basic comforts seemed the least of what she could do.

**Okay, I'm as ready as I'll ever be, and if I wait any longer, I'll just get even more nervous.**

A long vertical seam in the wall split abruptly and Haydn only then realized it was a door. A very large door. Through it came the familiar bright yellow Camaro she knew to be Bumblebee. The silver Nissan 'jumped' - that was the only word Haydn could think of to describe it - beneath her when the yellow car ended the silence with a loud greeting.

"Good morning, Squishy! Did you miss me? I missed you. Let me tell you, being reprimanded by both Prowl and Ratchet at the same time is nowhere near as fun as dodging 'Cade through the city with you. Not to mention, significantly more dangerous."

"Bee!" Bluestreak hissed. "Ratchet said-!"

"I know what Ratchet said, Blue. You didn't have him pound it into your processor with a wrench. However, I refuse to believe my squishy is as fragile as you guys think she is."

Haydn couldn't help but smile. Bumblebee reminded her a bit of her grandfather. Treating her as he would treat anyone else instead of as a handicapped person.

"Hey, watch this, Haydn!" The Camaro called out, and suddenly cracks broke out along the car's exterior. It seemed to split into hundreds of little whirling pieces that gyrated and folded in upon themselves. Right in front of her Bumblebee the talking car changed into an eighteen foot tall monstrosity of cold gleaming metal and glowing blue eyes.

Bits of yellow Camaro were noticeable amongst the twisted chrome that made up the rest of him. It was like someone had taken her talking car friend and mashed it together with that monster that had attacked her and killed Tabetha the night before into some frightening nightmare brought to life. Haydn was no longer smiling.

She sat expressionless and rigid on the edge of her seat staring unseeingly down at her feet. She was becoming increasingly aware of the car fidgeting nervously beneath her, and began hyperventilating when she came to the obvious conclusion that Bluestreak had to be the same type of thing.

Bumblebee was saying something, but Haydn wasn't listening. Her panicked mind was already reaching for the door handle, and her mind was too frantic to register that the door opened automatically on its own before she could touch it. She slid out and ran as fast as she could manage while limping away from the two of them.

The metal plant sculpture was the first hiding place she spotted and she went behind it to sit and reorganize her thoughts. Part of her knew it was still Bumblebee, but all the other part could see was the red eyed monster that had killed her roommate.

"Squishy?" she heard Bumblebee call hesitantly. The ground rumbled with his footsteps as he came closer to her. "Okay, maybe that was a bit much for you to process all at once..." He lowered himself into a sitting position next to the plant, and went quiet and still. A few moments later, Haydn's phone went off in her hand. She hadn't even realized she was still holding it.

**Bee: Is this a 'you need time to process' thing or a 'you want me to go away' thing? I'll leave if you want, I didn't mean to scare you.**

The act of reading words helped bring her back from her fear addled state of panic. It also helped her remember that this was Bumblebee; her friend who'd helped her escape from the psychotic police car and nearly got cut in half for it. She started typing out a reply.

She'd barely formed two words when the door to the room opened and, as if summoned from her nightmares, in rolled a police car.

"Bumblebee," the black and white cruiser spoke in a calm, almost emotionless, voice. "Ratchet has requested that I escort you to the medical bay since you seem to be ignoring his summons."

"Aww, c'mon Prowl, I- ," Bumblebee started but cut off when Haydn scrambled away from the sculpted plant to cling to his leg and place him between her and the police cruiser. She was hyperventilating so hard she started to hiccup. "Woah, Squishy, that's a new noise I've not heard you make before. What's wrong?"

Haydn was too terrified to answer, but after a moment Bluestreak spoke up. "Barricade. She thinks Prowl is Barricade."

"Negative," Prowl responded in the same neutral tone. "Barricade and I are not the same. That conclusion is highly unlikely."

"No, I think Blue's right, Prowl," Bee said, lowering a hand to place an extra reassuring barrier between Haydn and the new-comer. "Your vehicle mode does look a bit like 'Cade's."

"Barricade is a Ford Mustang Saleen S281E, I am a Honda Acura ILX, the two are not even from the same place of manufacture. The conclusion that the two of us are 'the same' is irrational."

"Irrational or not, you're scaring the squishy," Bee growled at him. "Ratchet, get Prowl out of here before he causes the human pump failure!"

There was a brief pause before the police cruiser finally began backing out of the room. "Very well, I will remain out of visual range of the organic pending further orders. I apologize for the misunderstanding even though your logic is unfounded and irrational. Bumblebee, chief mechanic Ratchet would still like to see you."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be there after I calm Haydn down," Bumblebee muttered as the door closed. He turned his attention to the quivering ball of fear clinging to his foot. "It's alright now, Squishy. Prowl won't hurt you. He's our strategist, tactician and head of security. He's not Barricade, that's for sure."

Haydn let herself sink down into a sitting position, her legs no longer trustworthy enough to stay standing. Her hand clutched tightly to her grandfather's pendant as she lifted her phone to try and compose a message again.

**I don't think I'll ever be able to see police car without a panic attack again. O_o **she sent.

**Bee: Heh, I'm just glad you're not afraid of me anymore. You're still making those little squeaky noises, is that okay?**

**They're just hiccups. Annoying and hard to stop, but not even remotely life threatening. Sorry I got scared, you're just so big. _ **

**Bee: You should see Blue, he's much bigger than I am.**

**Blue: Hey, keep me out of this! I don't want to be scary... :(**

**Bee: I don't think it's possible for you to be scary. Seriously, Squishy, you're probably scarier than he is.**

**Blue: ... I don't know if I should be insulted or not.**

**Are you really bigger? **Haydn asked, looking over at the silver Nissan in disbelief. Then she looked at the furnishings of the room again and realized that they were in fact too large to be practical for Bumblebee.

**Blue: Yeah, but almost everyone is bigger than Bee. Don't worry, I won't transform. I'm okay as a car. I don't like being scary.**

**Bee: Ha, you went over three sentences. Did you know, Squishy, that Ratchet left Blue with strict rules as to how much he was allowed to put into a message and how often he was allowed to send a message and all sorts of other stuff? Otherwise you'd be getting pages from him at a time I bet.**

**Blue: :(**

**Aww, stop picking on Blue! **Haydn scolded. **Blue, if I promise not to be scared will you transform? I don't think anything can scare me after seeing that police car...**

**Blue: Are you sure? I'm pretty big.**

**Yes. I'm sure. It'll make me feel better since that police car is still around somewhere. :S**

**Bee: Ha. Anyone else find it ironic that our head of security isn't making you feel very secure?**

**Blue: Only you, Bee.**

**Bee: Sideswipe would find it funny.**

**Blue: Sides' is psychotic. Okay, I'm transforming. Please don't be scared.**

Haydn peered around Bumblebee's leg as the same cracks she had seen appear on the yellow Camaro before spread across the Nissan. The pieces shifted and spun, contorting into another giant metal man, but this one had silver accents over the gleaming chrome. He was well over twenty feet tall and had a large gun slung across his back. He looked down at her uncertainly and Haydn started typing.

**You're not blue. : /**

**Blue: What?**

**Your name is Bluestreak, but there isn't a speck of blue on you. **

**Blue: I don't know, it's just my name.**

The twenty foot tall metal giant shrugged self-consciously and Bumblebee sighed, shaking his head.

**Bee: I should get going before Ratchet sends someone else after me.**

**You're leaving? D: What if the police guy comes back? And when can I go home?**

**Bee: You could come with to meet Ratchet, that would get you on your way home faster. He needs to run some diagnostics on you to figure out why you glow with Matrix energy and then figure out how to make it stop before you can go. Or else Decepticons like Barricade would just be able to find you again. As for Prowl, he isn't Barricade, and you really should try to not be afraid of him.**

**Is Ratchet scary?**

There was a pause in which both bots exchanged a look.

**Bee: Well...**

**Blue: Not exactly...**

**Bee: He takes it personally when one of us gets damaged doing something stupid. So, when you're prone to doing idiotic things like I am, he can be pretty scary. But for you, Squishy? Nah, he's not scary for you.**

**Blue: Yep. We're fairly certain that shouting and name calling is how he shows he cares. **

**Bee: And the throwing of dense objects.**

**Blue: Actually, I think that's mostly just you, Sides and 'Streaker.**

**Bee: Really? He doesn't throw things at you?**

**Blue: Only when I listen to you. **

**Bee: Huh. So how 'bout it, Squishy? Want to come meet Ratchet and possibly get home sometime today, or wait and get home much later?**

Haydn frowned as she thought it over. She didn't really feel up to meeting new people, especially more giant robots, but the thought of not having a shower or food besides granola bars was pretty depressing. Not to mention deodorant, toothpaste and toothbrush... the list went on. The deciding factor was when her body chose that moment to let her know she needed to use the bathroom sometime in the near future.

**I have to go back as soon as possible, at least to someplace with a bathroom, so I'll come with. :S What kind of 'diagnostics' will he be running on me?**

Bumblebee shrugged, getting to his feet. "I'm not sure. I'm not really a science mech, I shoot stuff."

He crouched and parts of him began whirling and folding into place like before, but this time in reverse. In less than three seconds the eighteen foot giant robot became a normal looking Camaro again and waited expectantly in front of Haydn with its door open.

"We haven't finished pumping Earth atmosphere into the ship yet and the halls aren't safe for you. The Med Bay is fine, but until we get there it's best if you ride with me."

Haydn climbed in and the door closed behind her. The seatbelt fastened itself while something from what he'd said struck her as odd. **Ship? Is your base on water?**

The stretch of silence that followed was longer than any of the ones before it. Even Bumblebee's engine felt more subdued than usual. Confused, Haydn sent another message. **What? Did I say something wrong? :(**

"No, no," Bumblebee replied quickly, "Not you. Great Primus in the pit, I'm an idiot. You should hear the obscenities Ratchet is streaming at me right now, Squishy, and he's right. I shouldn't have said that. Scrap. Can we just pretend I didn't say that and you can ask me about it again when we're back on- I mean, when we have you back home?"

**I guess... :( **Haydn didn't completely understand, but thought that maybe the location of their base was supposed to be secret. She set the thought aside as the door to the outside opened and Bumblebee rolled forward. Beside them, Bluestreak walked in his humanoid robot form.


	5. Med bays are supposed to make you better

**A/N -** I don't own transformers or their death bots of awesome and win. I do own Haydn.

Thanks for the reviews guys, you're amazing. :) Here, have another chapter. (Beta'd by the amazing Starcee)

* * *

**Chapter 5: In which we meet the good doctor... or in this case the violent grumpy old war medic**

The hallway was large, very large. Three Bluestreaks could have walked side by side and not have been too cramped. The ceiling was nearly twice as high as Blue's head, and Haydn briefly wondered just how big some of these guys could get. Then decided she probably didn't want to know the answer. Her phone buzzed and she looked down at the message.

**Blue: Ratchet wants to know if it'd be okay for him to message you on your communicator device like we do. **

**Bee: Him, and Hound, and Jazz, and 'Jack and like half the base. If Ratchet hadn't placed a 'contact-only-in-an-emergency' order on you, you'd be answering messages non-stop.**

**So many people... O_o Ratchet is okay, I think, but no one else right now. :S Are there that many people here? I haven't seen anyone else...**

**Bee: Ha. Ratchet had Prowl cleared the halls as soon as you decided to come with me. The only ones crazy enough to try and sneak a peek at you in defiance of Ratchet and Prowl would be me or Sides, and Sides isn't here. I don't need to sneak 'cause Blue and I are exempt from the order, of course.**

**Ratchet: Even when you're exempt from the rules, you still manage to find a way to break them. Sometimes, Bumblebee, I swear you're actively trying to make my circuits explode.**

**Bee: Hey, Doc! It's good to see you too. Squishy, this is our chief mechanic, Ratchet. He fixes us up when we're broke. **

**Ratchet: Pleasure to meet you, Haydn. I do find it difficult to believe that you allow him to call you 'Squishy'. If it offends you, you should let him know.**

**No, I don't mind. I know he doesn't mean it to be mean, **Haydn replied nervously.

**Bee: See, I told you.**

They'd reached the end of the hall and entered another room. This one was empty except for a control panel of some sort on the wall next to the inside of the door. The door closed, and Haydn realized it was an elevator of some sort when they began moving downwards.

**Ratchet: You asked earlier about what diagnostics I will be performing on you. It's just a simple scan of your energy readings, and you'll just need to be still for a minute or so for the scanner. Afterwards, Wheeljack and I will analyze the data to figure out the cause of your unusual energy emissions and find a way to counteract it. Then you will be free to return home without fear of unwanted attention.**

**How long will that take? :S**

**Ratchet: That depends on the nature of your energy emission abnormality. Anywhere from a day to possibly a year. It's also possible we may never find a way to counteract the effects. Without further information, an accurate time estimate isn't possible.**

**A year?! O_O I can't stay that long! I can't even stay a day! Not unless you guys have a working bathroom somewhere. Even then, I have class and my appointments with Dr. Ross... I can't just disappear for that long!**

**Ratchet: Hmm... I can see how that would be a problem. However, I think the risk of you being picked up by Decepticons is an even bigger problem. I cannot knowingly send you back into such danger. I'll get Wheeljack working on a 'bathroom', it can't be that difficult, and you can provide me with a list of other things you may need for the time being.**

**And class? And my therapy appointments? **Haydn questioned. It was easier for her to express herself when it was in typing and she couldn't see the person in front of her.

**Ratchet: Are those absolutely necessary for your continued operation? **

Haydn frowned. They weren't strictly essential to living, but she didn't like the idea of being abducted by talking cars that turned into giant robots and suddenly told how she was allowed to live her life.

**Bee: Woah, Ratchet, Squishy, calm down. How about if we escort her to those places? It shouldn't be a problem if we provide protection, right? Just until we get the energy thing sorted out?**

**Ratchet: No. We're already stretched too thin as it is, and if she returns to her people she'll not only be a danger to herself, but also all of the humans around her. I simply cannot allow it, the risk is just too great.**

**So... what you're saying is, I'm not allowed to leave? I'm being held captive?**

**Bee: Oooh, Squishy, excellent point. Autobots don't take innocent captives, Ratchet. You can't even argue 'mechanic's orders' because it's better for her health to be at home. We can spare two mechs to keep an artifact from falling into Decepticon hands, it's the bridges we don't have enough of.**

The car stopped, and Haydn looked up. She hadn't realized they'd gotten out of the elevator, or gone down another hall, or entered another room. She assumed this one had to be the med bay, but it was hard to see from the floor level. Everything in it was sized much like Blue's room had been, and when she spotted the just-a-bit-taller-than-Blue mech approaching them, she began to regret possibly making this one angry.

He stopped just a few yards from them and folded his arms across his chest in a 'what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you' manner. He was similar to the others in that he was made of the same sculpted metal and bits of vehicle; an ambulance, Haydn was almost certain. Red and white twisted together with gleaming chrome; and while she wasn't the best at reading emotions on the faces of giant robots, Haydn was pretty sure this one was scowling. She dropped her gaze to her lap and fidgeted with the phone in her hands.

"Alright, this is your stop, Squishy," Bumblebee spoke, and the door opened. Haydn contemplated staying inside the Camaro where it was relatively safe, as opposed to the unknown danger of their surroundings. Except she still needed a bathroom, and staying in the car wasn't getting her any closer to that goal. She climbed out and stood, leaning tentatively on the door, beside Bumblebee.

She could see the room better once outside, not that she could make sense of what was there. A large computer was on the desk off to her right, and to her left there were huge metal tables, four of them, one of them was occupied. By another large red bot she couldn't see clearly from the floor. On the walls hung a variety of different tools, most of them sharp, and she quickly looked away. She felt very... small.

A shadow passed over her and she flinched as something lowered down next to her. It was a giant metal hand, she blinked at it uncomprehendingly.

"The scanner is up here," the red and white mech explained. "This is the most effective way to get you to it."

Swallowing, Haydn climbed awkwardly onto the hand. She grimaced when she jarred her ankle against the side, but otherwise managed to find a reasonably comfortable position to sit in. The fingers curled up and around her, and she felt her stomach drop as she was lifted up... so very far up... and eventually set down on the desk by the large computer.

"If you will just stand over here," he went on, indicating an area under a huge machine that reminded her of a microscope. Except not as long, and there wasn't really an eye piece at the top to look into. Cables as thick as her leg ran from it to the computer. Shoving her hands nervously into her pockets, Haydn limped over to stand under the huge device.

She hazarded a glance up and stiffened when she saw the twisted remains of a giant robot on the table across from her. She couldn't tell what vehicle it turned into, but it was probably something red. It looked like it was missing an arm and a leg as well as a chunk of its torso. The eyes, at least Haydn thought they were eyes, weren't lit up like Bumblebee's were. Was... it dead?

A large yellow metallic head raised itself in front of her and she jumped back in surprise. She recognized Bumblebee, and lowered her gaze to the tabletop in front of her. Bumblebee looked over his shoulder to see what she had been staring at.

"Ah, yeah, Cliff's in pretty bad shape," he explained, turning back to face her. "He and his partner, Arcee, got ambushed. He took most of the hits as they escaped, covering for his partner. I'm still not sure how Arcee managed to haul his mangled wreck back here."

"But don't worry," he went on, "Doc'll fix him up as good as new. I'm more worried about Arcee. She's been alternating between pestering Ratchet for updates and dismantling training drones. She'd be in here right now if Ratchet hadn't sent everyone away that was capable of walking out on their own."

_She?_Haydn thought. There could be girl robots? Did that even make sense?

"Alright," Ratchet announced, tapping busily away at the computer terminal attached to the device. "We're done."

"Really?" Bumblebee asked. "That was fast!"

"Yes, well, I couldn't do a real scan without knowing human radiation tolerance. I just took a quick recording of her emissions. We may need to do a more in depth scan later, once I know more," the medic explained.

"Great! So we can leave now? See, Squishy? We'll have you back home in no time," Bumblebee cheered.

The door to the room opened, startling everyone, and in stepped a small blue and silver bot just a bit over half the size of Bumblebee. She had distinctly feminine features and Haydn briefly wondered if this was the female robot Bumblebee had been talking about.

"Arcee, you're not supp-," Ratchet began scolding, but was cut off when the little blue mech charged forward and rammed her shoulder into the back of the mechanic's knee. While he was still falling, Arcee launched herself straight for Bumblebee.

"Arcee! Are you glitched?!" Bumblebee demanded, stepping forward to intercept the charging bot. Arcee didn't reply, or even engage him. She leapt up, landing hard on Bumblebee's shoulders, and jumping off his back. She landed on the table right in front of Haydn.

Haydn backpedaled away, but Arcee snatched her up as if she were a child. Below, Ratchet and Bumblebee were recovering, but the blue mech was already in motion. She'd turned on one foot to face the table with the damaged red bot on it, and crouched low to jump. Haydn closed her eyes and clutched tightly to the large metallic hands holding her, trying very hard to not think about how far the floor was beneath her. Arcee leapt.

Their flight came to an abrupt halt, and the mech holding her let out a cry of frustration. Haydn opened her eyes to see just exactly how far below her the ground was. Shifting her gaze upward she noticed Bluestreak had Arcee by the waist just short of her destination. The small bot's feet grew blades on the tips and it kicked at him, but it couldn't reach the silver mech holding her at arms length.

"Let me go!" she growled at him. "Cliff needs it! If you guys won't use the artifact on him, then I will!"

"No. Ratchet said we don't know enough about what will happen!" Blue countered. He was trying to figure out how to get his other hand in there to get to Haydn without getting cut by her foot-blades. "For all we know it could be damaging Haydn..."

Bumblebee finished getting up and grabbed Arcee's kicking feet. "Knock it off, Arcee. Cliff'll be fine, Doc says he's stabilized and will get to work patching him up as soon as he can."

Then Ratchet joined in scolding the little blue mech and things became entirely too loud for Haydn. Unable to put her hands over her ears to block out all the noise, she gritted her teeth and looked around for something else to focus on. The red bot on the table in front of her grabbed her attention immediately.

Haydn had forgotten about the white lightning from before. If she could talk she would tell them she didn't mind healing Arcee's friend. She hadn't been able to do anything for her own friend, Tabetha; the least she could do was make sure someone else didn't lose a friend. She was a little bit worried about whether the healing was hurting her, but so far she hadn't noticed any side effects.

She let out a small terrified squeak when Arcee suddenly released her, but she didn't fall far to the large silver hand beneath her. Bluestreak moved his hand away from Arcee so Haydn was hovering just a few feet above the table with the red mech. Frowning, Haydn thought she could make that jump. Besides, if she stopped to ask for permission, they'd probably say no. So she jumped.

Except she'd forgotten about her foot. As soon as she put her weight on it, pain shot up her leg and she crumpled into a heap on the giant chest plate. As her hands made contact with the metal, the white lightning snaked from her and across the robot like before. She was too busy writhing in pain to notice. Thankfully the shouting and conversation had stopped around her, or at least it had lessened and taken on a different tone.

"Squishy?!" Bumblebee shouted in alarm. "Blue, you dropped her?!"

"I didn't! She jumped! Why did she jump? Is she alright? Did I break her?" Bluestreak asked anxiously.

"She's moving, at least she's not offline," Arcee commented in a subdued tone. "Look at Cliff, though, that stuff works fast... oh scrap, what if he comes online?"

"He went offline in combat mode, he'll come back online in combat mode," Ratchet's voice cracked through the confusion with an edge of authority. "Bee, Blue, get his shoulders. Arcee, his legs. It's important we don't move the organic until we can be sure of what's wrong with her."

Ratchet leaned his weight on Cliffjumper's arms while the others took their posts. The matrix energy was working its way swiftly through Cliff's body, regrowing limbs, and replacing the lost parts of his midsection... Ratchet watched it all in wonder. When everything was in its place, the lightning faded away. Then the lights came on in Cliffjumper's optics.

To Haydn it felt like an earthquake when the surface she was on suddenly began moving beneath her. It buckled and jumped, sending stabbing pains through her foot and up her leg. It felt like her foot was broken, but she knew it was most likely just severely sprained. Either way, all she wanted to do was get to a hospital and have them make the pain stop.

They tried their best to keep the red mech still, but Cliffjumper wasn't exactly a weak bot. Eventually his optics came into focus and he stared blearily up at Bluestreak and Bumblebee. "Uh, what's going on guys? Arcee- Where's Arcee?"

"I'm fine, I'm right here. More importantly, don't move," Arcee called out. "There's an organic on your chest plate, Ratchet said not to move her yet."

"Okay, I won't move. Now will someone explain what's going on? When did we decide to make contact with the organics? How long have I been offline?"

Ratchet frowned down at the human, leaving the others to answer Cliff's questions. He had very little knowledge of organic engineering. He needed to get her to a human mechanic. He turned back to his desk to try and find something to use to transfer her to a vehicle.

"You've only been out for a couple days," Bumblebee explained to Cliffjumper. "And we still haven't officially made contact with the organics. This is Haydn, she gives off matrix energy like an artifact and I had to bring her here before Barricade could take her. Turns out the artifact can repair damaged bots, pretty useful, eh?"

"Wait... are you telling me this little squishy thing right here is the reason I'm online?"

"Yeah, but we think she damaged herself-"

"And if you scrap heaps would stop yammering and get out of my way, I might be able to do something about it!" Ratchet cut in, elbowing aside Bumblebee to make room. He placed a sheet of scrap metal that had a carbon fiber cloth laid over it next to Haydn. "Arcee, you're the best suited to move her without too much unnecessary movement. Then we use this to transfer her into someone's vehicle mode to take her to a human mechanic."

He looked around at the autobots surrounding him, taking a mental list of their alt modes. He growled when he came to the obvious conclusion. "Slaggin' useless piece of scrap sports cars!" he snarled at them. "Alright, _I'll_take her. It's what my vehicle mode was made for supposedly...," Ratchet muttered, stepping back to transform.

Arcee was already climbing up onto the table to help transfer Haydn to the new, more mobile, surface. "So... I just move her with as little movement as possible?" she asked for clarification.

"Yes. Quickly and gently, mind the head." Ratchet opened his back to allow easy access. "Bumblebee, find the gate with the nearest human repair dock."

"That's easy. Sides and 'Streaker were complaining about having to stake one out the past few days. We'll take their bridge," Bee replied, watching Arcee as she transferred his squishy from Cliff's chestplate to the cloth covered slab Ratchet had rigged up. Then he took one side while Arcee took the other and they lowered her down to where they could place her into the ambulance.

"There's already a soft flat surfaced thing in here," Arcee commented as she was bent double to fit inside the back of the truck. "Should we place her on that?"

"Yes, yes, that's what the cloth is for. Transfer her from the scrap metal by lifting her with the cloth directly onto it. Then buckle her in and get out so we can get moving," Ratchet grouched. Bumblebee and Arcee quickly lifted Haydn onto the gurney.

"I'll stay back here to keep her still," Arcee shouted from the back.

"Fine, whatever," Ratchet growled, slamming his doors shut. "Let's get a move on. Bee, lead the way."

"On it," the Camaro called back, transforming mid-stride with Bluestreak not far behind him.

Left alone on the recovery table, Cliffjumper blinked at their retreating taillights. "Uhm... guys? Can I move now?"

After waiting a couple seconds and not getting a 'no', he leapt off the table, transforming in mid-flight, and raced after them. "Hey, wait for me!"


	6. Whose idea was this anyway?

******A/N -** I do not own Transformers, or any of it's cars I so desperately wish I owned. I do own Haydn though, so that's something.

This and the next are my two favorite chapters so far. :3 I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. Thanks to Starcee for Betaing again, she's wonderful. XD

* * *

**Chapter 6:** **Sunstreaker and Sideswipe fail at stealth. And patience. And... why were they sent on this mission again?**

Leon liked to believe he lived a normal life. He woke up in the morning, got dressed, showered, ate, went to school, then went to work to go home, sleep and do it all over again. Except he was fairly certain he was being stalked by possessed demon Lamborghinis. Lamborghini_s_. Plural. As in there were two Lamborghini Aventadors popping up wherever he went.

It'd all started about four days ago. When he'd walked out of his apartment, a half eaten bagel in one hand, and first spotted the cherry-red Italian sports car in the parking lot. He'd stopped to admire it- of course, who wouldn't?- but then hurried off to the class he was going to be late for.

When he'd arrived on campus and climbed down out of his well-loved Toyota truck, there was another Lamborghini parked just five cars down from him, this one bright sunshine yellow. Thus began the new pattern that had become his life. Every time he'd walked outside, from then on, he'd find an Aventador in either red or yellow. A few times he'd even spotted them in his rearview mirror on the road. It was downright eerie.

Finally, when he'd had break between school and work, he decided to wait for the owner of the cars and demand to know why he was being followed. He'd found a bench right in front of the, currently red, Lamborghini and set himself down to wait for the driver to show up.

He hadn't even been waiting ten minutes when out of nowhere the passenger side door swung open of it's own accord. Unnerved, Leon scanned his surroundings to see if maybe the driver was using a keyless entry remote to mess with his head. He turned back when the engine turned on, and the car began to inch toward him.

He'd already just about decided it was time for him to leave, when he would have sworn on the grave of his beloved grandmother, the car _spoke_.

"Get in."

Leon ran.

That had been this morning. Now he was dawdling around the hospital he worked at hoping for overtime so he didn't have to go outside. He was fervently wishing he'd just been hallucinating and that there were not, in fact, twin demon Lamborghinis waiting to follow him home. No such luck, there was no overtime for him. So, reluctantly, he changed out of his janitor coverall, and prepared to run to his car if need be. He peered out the glass doors, and sure enough, there was the red Aventador parked right next to his truck. Maybe he'd take the bus today...

He went out the front instead of the employee side entrance, and froze when he saw the yellow Lamborghini parked right out front. Not only that, but he spotted several other shiny muscle cars that he just _knew_ were in on whatever was happening. A Camaro, a Porsche, a Nissan Z... the cars were after him!

He would have turned and ran again, but motion caught his attention and he looked over to see a girl in a wheelchair making her way to the door. Having worked here often enough to recognize certain signs, she was clearly in distress and needed some help. Eyeing the cars warily, Leon rushed to help get her inside, grabbing the handles on the wheelchair.

"You alright?" he asked, looking her over to try and see the problem. The girl didn't reply, but she flinched whenever they went over a bump, and she held her right foot just a bit off the foot rest. He bet there was something wrong with that foot. "Hold on, I'll get you inside, they can help you there."

Still no reply from her, but the wheelchair was surprisingly easy to maneuver. The chairs they had on site weren't nearly as nice. He'd have to make sure this one didn't get confused with theirs, it did look almost identical. It also gave him an excuse to stay with the girl in the hospital since it didn't look like he was going to be able to make a clean getaway with all those cars watching.

He took them back through the doors and up to the front desk to get her checked in. The receptionist handed him a clipboard to fill out and he took her to sit in the waiting room. "Uhm, you're supposed to fill this out.."

She reached for the paperwork and he frowned as she shakily tried to fill it out. She was clearly in a lot of pain. He sighed, and took it from her. "I'll fill it out, you got an ID or something?"

She reached into a pocket and handed him two cards. One was a state ID from the other side of the country, and another was a card with some words on the front of it. He read them, then read it again to make sure he understood it right. "Wow, well... Haydn? Sorry, I had no idea. I'll let the doctors know about this."

"Leon...?" A voice called from across the room, and Leon waved the doctor over.

"Here, Stephens," he said, wheeling Haydn around. "She's got a swollen ankle, and an anxiety disorder that keeps her from talking in public. Give her something to kill the pain so she can fill out the forms."

"Bring her on back, I'll see what I can do," Stephens answered, pointing to one of the rooms. "Any allergies I should be aware of? Current prescriptions?"

The girl shook her head and the doctor nodded. "I'll get some ice for that as well."

Less than five minutes later, Haydn was lying on a paper covered examination table, after downing some painkiller or other the doctor had handed her, and was impatiently waiting for it to take effect. Leon was sitting in a chair in the corner attempting to fill out a stranger's medical information. Which was still significantly better than trying to figure out how to escape a pack of demon stalker vehicles.

After asking to see if Haydn had wanted her foot X-rayed to see if it was broken and getting a head shake, Stephens had wrapped and iced the ankle, given her the pain pills and left her with a prescription to get more. He was going to be back to check up on her in a few minutes. With the edge of the pain fading away, Haydn reluctantly pulled her phone out of her pocket to attempt to answer some of the hundred or so text messages she had, judging by how often it had gone off.

She skimmed the messages, most of which were asking to know if she was alright. Two new names had been added to her phone, Arcee and Cliffjumper, and she'd received a thank you from both of them as well as their concern over her well-being. She grimaced and formulated a mass text to all of them and then prepared for the barrage of questions.

**Sorry to worry all of you, I'm alright now. The doctor gave me some painkillers and iced my ankle. I won't be able to walk on it for a couple weeks, maybe more. I'll get some crutches so you won't have to be my wheelchair, Arcee. That was dumb of me, I forgot about my ankle when I jumped. :(**

She pressed the send button and waited. Sure enough, the replies began pouring in.

**Arcee: No need to apologize, you have done Cliff and me a great service. I will be your wheels for as long as you wish it. Please, allow me to repay you at least this much. **

**Cliff: Yeah, what Arcee said. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.**

**Bee: Squishy! You had me so worried! Why did you jump? And I know I don't know much about organics but, 'painkillers', 'iced', 'crutches'? These don't sound very pleasant...**

**Blue: I'm so glad you're okay! When you fell I really thought I'd dropped you, but then I realized you'd jumped, and when you landed and fell like a bot with a shot foot joint, I thought I'd broken you, because organics are so fragile, with no armor, and I didn't know what dropping one would do...**

Bluestreak's post went on for a whole page and a half like that. Bumblebee hadn't been entirely kidding when he'd said Haydn would be getting pages from him at a time if Ratchet hadn't placed limits.

**Bee: Woah, Blue, remember the rules! Three sentences, please! Squishy can only process so much at a time. **

**Sideswipe: Hey, what's all this? I didn't know we were allowed to use these things! Cool!**

**Arcee: Scrap.**

**Bee: Uh-oh...**

**Uh-oh? Why 'uh-oh'?** Haydn asked, but her answer came in a different form.

A sense of dread settled over her as the sound of another phone going off came from the guy sitting in the corner. Absent-mindedly he fished his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. Slowly Haydn watched him tense up as he read whatever text message he'd received. She turned back to her phone.

**Is that you guys? Why are you sending messages to that guy?! _ **

**Bee: Not 'us', it's Sides. He's been trying to talk to that guy all day, he's another artifact like you. **

**Sides: Yeah, and he's been a real pain too. I just want to talk to him, it's not like I'm going to eat him...**

**Cliff: Kind of hard to tell from the messages you're sending.**

**Arcee: Sideswipe, you're an idiot.**

**Why? What messages is he sending?! **Haydn demanded, glancing up at the man who was now staring white-faced at his phone. Suddenly he flipped it open and removed the battery from the back, then placed the pieces back in his pocket. He stood up and went to peer out the window at the parking lot. Haydn dropped her eyes back to her phone, chewing her lip nervously.

**Bee: Well... they're kinda... I don't know how to explain.**

**Arcee: They're threats. That's what they are.**

**Sides: Slag, he disabled it. Now how am I supposed to talk to him?**

**Arcee: You could take a hint and stop.**

**Sides: No way! Sunny and I have almost wrapped this 'scouting' mission up. See, scouting isn't so hard.**

**Cliff: I'm pretty sure you've already failed. Or didn't you see the messages from Ironhide about keeping a low profile?**

Haydn's head began to swim from all the stress she was under. She was pretty sure if she weren't on prescription painkillers she'd have a nasty headache. On top of all that, she still had to go to the bathroom and eat something more substantial than a granola bar. Something waved itself across her field of vision and she focused on the clipboard dangling in front of her face.

"I filled out what I could from your ID, but if you can finish it up we can give to it Stephens when he comes back and get out of here," the guy told her. He was doing a good job of pretending nothing was wrong, but Haydn could hear the strain in his voice. He was scared. She took the clipboard and pen and finished up the details, wishing she could open her mouth and explain to him what was going on. Not that she actually knew everything for herself.

The doctor returned not much later with a pair of crutches and a hard plastic boot. "Here you go, to help you get around when you can't take your wheelchair. We looked up your medical details and it seems your insurance covers... well... everything. Try to stay off of the foot as much as possible and follow up with your doctor in a couple weeks." He left them then, taking the clipboard with him and telling her she was free to go whenever. The first thing Haydn did was to use the crutches to get to the bathroom.

Leon leaned against the wall to stare out the window at the flashy stalker cars. Abruptly three of them backed out of their spots and left. The Porsche, Nissan and yellow Lamborghini. That just left the red Lamborghini and Camaro, though he was probably better off when he knew where they all were. What was he going to do about them?

He still didn't have an answer for himself when Haydn came back from the bathroom. So clearly the best plan of assault was to stop thinking about it and procrastinate making a decision. He wheeled her wheelchair over to her and put a foot on the back to keep it steady for her to get in. "Here, let me help you some more, no offense. I'm just a sucker for a damsel in distress. You know where you're heading after this?"

Haydn furrowed her brow in thought as she climbed into the chair and leaned the crutches against her shoulder so they'd be out of the way as they went down the hospital's narrow halls. Once settled, she pointed toward the doorway. She needed to be outside in order to use the internet on her phone. Leon obliged, propelling her forward. She took this time to check her messages.

**Blue: Uh, something came up. We're being called back to support Mirage and Hound. Bee and Sides are staying here with you, though. And Arcee of course.**

**Sides: You got that right. I will complete this stupid scouting mission.**

**Bee: If you think it's stupid then why don't you just leave?**

**Sides: Nah, Sunny's got it, he doesn't need me. Besides, I'll show you guys that Sunny and I can be just as cowardly and sneaky as you scouts when we want to.**

**Arcee: Idiot.**

Haydn looked up when they got outside to spot the reassuringly familiar yellow Camaro, and then glanced around to try and figure out which car was Sideswipe. Nothing immediately popped out to her. She shrugged it off and turned back to her phone, opening google maps to locate a local motel. There was one just a few blocks away, and she used their website to book a room for a couple nights. She didn't know how long she was staying, and didn't want to have to use the front desk to extend her stay. She held up the phone to Leon, and pointed at the address for the motel.

"You want to go there?" he asked uncertainly. She nodded, still facing forward and not looking at him. "Alright, I know where that is. It's not far, are you okay with walking? Er, rolling?" Again she nodded and he began pushing her out of the parking lot. He shot the Camaro a nervous glance, but it didn't move or give any other sign of... whatever it was that was wrong with those Lamborghinis.

On the way there, she found a local Chinese food place and ordered some orange chicken and fried rice to have delivered to her motel room. If it weren't for the Internet she wasn't sure how she'd get anything done.

They reached their destination and Leon decided it was probably more than past time he left to try and figure out his own problems instead of putting them off. "You going to be alright on your own?"

She hesitated, wishing she could do more to help him, but lacking the courage she nodded instead. As he walked away, and she pretended to wheel herself to the motel front office (Arcee really did all the work), she hoped he wouldn't be too mad at her when they most likely met again. Oh well, at least now she had a nice warm shower to look forward to. Stupid ankle.


	7. Leon's worst day ever

**A/N - **I don't own Transformers. I own Haydn and Leon.

Thank to Starcee for betaing. Enjoy the chapter. :)

* * *

**Chapter 7: Sideswipe - Can't tell if stupidly smart... or just stupid...**

Leon shoved his hands nervously into his pockets as he slowly made his way back to the hospital. He wasn't even sure he wanted to go there, but he was reluctant to leave his truck there over night. His hands contacted the pieces of his phone and that only brought more uncertainty to his thoughts. Taking a risk, he took the parts out and put them back together, booting up his phone.

**Why are you stalking me, what do you want? **he replied to the mysterious number that had suddenly started texting him.

**You. We want you. It's that simple, just get in the car**,came the immediate reply.

**I'm not getting in that car. Leave me alone or I'll call the police, I've got your texts to prove I'm being stalked!**

There was a pause and something weird happened with his phone. It suddenly went into the settings, scrolling down the list of options and selected 'delete all' under text messages. Leon tried to stop it, but it didn't respond to him.

**What now, Fleshy? **a new message appeared tauntingly. Leon took the battery out again.

There was a police station a couple blocks away if he took the next left instead of continuing toward the hospital. He was going to go there, explain his case and at least get some advice. Maybe leave out the part about talking cars.

He was so preoccupied with getting his story straight, he was caught completely off guard when out of nowhere a pair of strong arms grabbed him and pulled him deep into an obscure alley. His back was shoved up against a wall and something was pressed against his ribs. He looked down at the gun in sheer disbelief, then up to the faces of the two thugs that had him pinned.

"Give us your wallet!"

Mugged. He was getting mugged. Of all the stupid ridiculous things that had happened to him today... chased by talking cars who then sent him threatening text messages; it just didn't seem possible that he could be mugged on the same day. This was officially the worst day of his life. Numbly he fished into his back pocket for his wallet. Not like he had much in there anyway...

Then his day got even weirder. Dropping down from ledge above him, something large and metallic landed on top of the two guys assaulting him. It was like someone had decided to make a sculpture out of razor blades and made it a bird for some reason. It had red glowing eyes and an apparent disregard for life as it proceeded to use its many bladed 'feathers' to shred the two thugs into something resembling hamburger more than human bodies.

"Hello, Leon," a voice like scraping metal crooned at him as those glowing red eyes turned to fix on him. There was the sound of tinkling metal as the bloody feather blades dropped to the ground and were replaced by shiny new ones. "You looked like you could use a bit of help. Today just hasn't been your day, has it, Leon?"

Leon's eyes darted toward the only visible exit, out to the street, but the bird was between him and that. Not to mention, inches from his face. It chuckled, a sound similar to grinding gears, as it flapped its wings and stretched out its talons toward him. The screech of tires made the bird's head twist to peer warily at the headlights coming their way. Screeching in annoyance, the bird turned and threw its wings forward with a mighty heave. Feather blades shot out toward the oncoming car, most bouncing off, but a couple embedding themselves in the hood.

"Ah! You did _not _just scratch my paint!" a creepily familiar voice called out from the now recognizable red Aventador. The car came to an abrupt halt, and its hood split into a myriad of little cracks and two heavy machine guns formed themselves from the pieces. Leon cringed against the wall as the sound of rapid gunfire exploded around him.

The bird weaved and bobbed through the hail of bullets. It took the brunt of the attack but was still surprisingly agile as it whirled about and dove deeper into the alley. "No you don't, get back here you...!" the Lamborghini cried out, still firing as it chased after it. The sound of sirens didn't really surprise Leon, as they were not even two blocks from a police station; though they did fill him with alarm as he looked down as his blood spattered clothing.

He looked over his shoulder at the Lamborghini attempting to wrestle a metallic chicken out of the air and doubted he had an acceptable story to tell the police. Red and blue lights flashed as cruisers turned down the alley way. Instantly the car and bird broke off their fight, the Aventador returning to being just a car and the bird seeming to melt itself into the shadows as it scrambled up the wall and over the edge of a roof.

And that was how Leon found himself lit up by police car headlights, standing in a pool of blood next to a pair of mutilated corpses and bloody knives scattered at his feet. There was literally no other choice to take when the Lamborghini's door swung silently and invitingly open. He climbed in, knowing he was going to regret it later. He'd completely forgotten the wallet he'd dropped somewhere around the time the robot chicken had showed up.

Once inside the car, the door slammed shut and locked itself while the seat belt wrapped him tightly in place. "Finally! Ewww... you're covered in organic slime. Don't touch anything, I'll get us out of here."

"I hate you," Leon muttered, glaring at the screen in the dashboard.

"What?! What did I do? Is that anyway to talk to the bot that just saved your life? Jerk," the Lamborghini muttered, revving its engine to give the organic fair warning before he charged and bashed through their barricade. He didn't think he hurt any of them.

"Saved my life? You've ruined it!" Leon shouted. "And for what? I don't even know! What do you things want from me?!"

"Yeesh, you're so noisy. I think I like Bee's squishy better. Look, I was asked to retrieve an artifact and that's what I'm doing. You just happen to be that artifact. I didn't make you one, so don't blame me. Oh, and just so you know, Laserbeak would have grabbed you a lot sooner if not for Sunny and me."

"Sunny? And what's your name? Rainbows?"

"Sideswipe, actually. My brother is Sunstreaker. You probably shouldn't call him Sunny, by the way. Artifact or not, he may actually kill you. Though probably just put you through a lot of pain. He's not as friendly as I am."

"You're the friendly one?" Leon asked skeptically.

"Between me and Sunny? Oh yeah."

"Augh..," Leon muttered, trying not to give into the headache that was rapidly developing. This had to be the least helpful talking car thing in existence. "Fine. Whatever. Where are we going and what do you plan on doing with me?"

"Get you back to base and await further orders. I have no idea what they plan on doing with you, but I can guarantee you it's a lot nicer than what Beaksy had planned. Anyway, hold on a sec, I gotta make a call to my temporary partner and let him know what's going on."

"The Camaro? Where did the rest of you go from the hospital anyway?"

"Eh, Mirage and Hound had a little run in with Starscream and they needed back up. Now shush." There was a brief pause before the voice picked up again. "Hey, Bee... guess what?"

"... you got your squishy, didn't you? What'd you do, snatch him off the street?"

"No! He got in all on his own. I didn't have to grab mine like some bots I know. I got this scouting thing down. Anyway, there was an incident involving human peacekeepers and Laserbeak and I'm on my way out of the city while things die down. Meet me on the bridge side of town when you get a chance?"

"Primus, Sides, you didn't blow anything up, did you?"

"What? No. I'm being sneaky, like a scout. There was just a small amount of gunfire; and before you ask, no, I did not shoot any organics. Seriously, you guys always assume the worst."

"That's because with you it usually _is _the worst. Alright, I'll meet up with you when Squishy is done."

"How long will that be?"

"I have no idea. Right now you know about as much about organics as I do."

"At least your squishy is quiet. Mine is noisy and covered in red slime."

"Hey!" Leon protested. "It's blood, I'm covered in blood from those guys that creepy metal chicken killed. I didn't exactly have time to clean off before getting in the car, alright? And by 'squishy' do you mean to tell me you have _another_human prisoner? You can't just go around abducting people!"

"You and Haydn are not prisoners," the other voice replied indignantly. "You're just under our protection until we can sort out how to stop you guys from glowing like artifacts. Speaking of which, Sides, did you figure out what the artifact does?"

"You mean to tell me it does something other than complain and drip slime?" the Lamborghini muttered.

"Wait, go back," Leon interrupted. "Haydn. The girl in the wheelchair with the sprained ankle?"

"Yes, but don't be mad at her. She really had no idea you were an artifact until Sides started messing with your communications device. Thank you for helping her, by the way. We were all really worried she was seriously damaged."

"I'm not mad at her, I'm mad at you guys for dragging her into all this! How did she sprain the ankle?" Leon demanded.

A new voice answered this time, one with a more feminine tone. "That was my fault, as am I partially to blame for your abduction by Sideswipe. My partner, Cliffjumper, and I were originally assigned to scout out the matrix energy in this area, but we were ambushed by Decepticons. I didn't ask him to, but Cliff took most of their fire as we were escaping and sustained severe damage. We were called back and Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were assigned here instead."

"When Bumblebee reported an artifact that could repair damaged mechs in moments, I immediately requested it be used on Cliff but was denied. So I broke into the medical bay to do it myself. I failed, but in the confusion Haydn took it upon herself to repair Cliff and jumped from Bluestreak and damaged herself in the fall. I regret your hardships as a result of my actions, but I do not regret what I did."

Leon blinked, unable to think of something to say to that. Apparently not all of the cars were as rude as the one he was in and he just had the misfortune of being stuck with this one. "So...," he began slowly, addressing the dashboard. "You knew you were going into an enemy controlled area when you came out here and you went anyway?"

"Of course. That's what Sunny and I do. Besides, it's not like those guys were all that tough. We got jumped too, but we sent them to the scrap heap. We stayed in case there were more, but, except for Beaksy popping up today, it's been painfully boring."

Leon couldn't help but feel a bit of grudging respect for a guy who'd walk knowingly into an enemy ambush. Not that he was beginning to like the Lamborghini, but he could see why people put up with him.

Sideswipe had lost the organic police somewhere around the time he'd made the call to Bumblebee, and they were currently zooming down the interstate on their way out of town. It took them less than an hour to get from the down-town hospital to the edge of what Leon considered civilization. A trip that normally took two hours. On a good day. If he had to be kidnapped and stuck in a car, at least it was a Lamborghini. Having nothing better to do, he'd looked over the fine interior at least a dozen times.

He was just working up the nerve to attempt to turn on the radio or something, when the Aventador pulled a sudden U-turn, throwing Leon against the side door as it randomly rocketed off the road and cross country. "Wha- What was that?!" Leon sputtered, trying to right himself.

"Oh, I'm just leading our pursuers away from organics so we can have a proper bot-to-bot fight without involving others," Sideswipe replied casually.

Leon looked into the mirrors, but didn't see what the car was talking about. "I don't see anything."

"Of course you don't. Soundwave is the sneakiest, most cowardly scout-mech of them all. He's been listening in on all of our communications, you see, and knows exactly where all of us are right now. He can't hear this, though, this is on interior speakers only. There's a spot about a mile up the freeway where it would have made sense for him to set up an ambush. Except I'm taking a detour and forcing them to come to us."

Leon sat stunned as the car he'd previously assumed was a moron began to layout a reasonably intelligent plan. "If they have Skywarp with them, as I assume they do, then they should get here in about fifteen seconds. If not, and I will be sorely disappointed if that's the case, then we have about fifteen minutes before they catch up. If I feel like allowing them to. Either way, our chances of survival jump from forty percent to sixty-five percent. Eighty-five percent if Soundwave does what he normally does and continues to stay away from the fight. Oh hey look, they _do _have Skywarp with them. And no Soundwave. This is going to be _awesome_."

Leon wasn't sure how the Lamborghini knew their enemies before they were visible, but watched in growing alarm as the air a ways in front of them began to buckle and waiver like a mirage. As if punching straight through the fabric of reality, three jets pierced the distortion and flew straight for them. What happened next would probably cause Leon nightmares for the rest of his life.

The Lamborghini around him began to crack apart into hundreds of little pieces that contorted and shifted into different shapes like what he had seen when it'd suddenly sprouted machine guns on its hood before. Moments before the seat he was sitting on dropped out from underneath him, Leon was grabbed by a giant metal hand and the whole car twisted itself into a shape similar of a human. With wheels on its feet that propelled itself forward as if on rollerblades.

And then rocket launchers popped up from it's shoulderblades and launched a volley of missiles directly at their opponents before they'd even fully emerged from their warp. Blades formed on Sideswipe's wrists as he continued to propel them forward, not waiting for the rockets to land before launching himself at the middle front jet.

Leon's panicked screaming was drowned out by the concussive blasts of the missiles exploding around them, he didn't notice the red lightning that laced from the white-knuckled grip he had on the metallic fingers grasping him and snake across the surface of the Lamborghini-mech. Surprise almost broke through Sideswipe's combat concentration when his blades began to glow red and burn with an odd fire. Distraction was death, however, so he ignored it and went on with what he was doing. He was only going to get one shot at this.

He swung his free wrist blade down on what should have been Skywarp's warping systems, but he cursed when he found no resistance. The coward had already warped off. Oh well. Thundercracker and Jetfire plus the six drones they'd brought with them was a good enough fight. He let himself fall out of the smoke cloud left by his missiles and he landed with as much grace as he could muster, which was considerable. He glanced at the squishy in his hand and noted that it was still making noises. That was a good sign, then he set it down on the ground.

"Don't move or you'll throw off my calculations," he ordered, before taking off again toward the six black drone mechs that were emerging from the explosion as well. Jetfire and Thundercracker split up and took two flanking positions as they landed and transformed to give the drones cover fire. Training his missiles on the two ranged enemies, Sideswipe charged right for the nearest drone. He had to prioritize nearest opponent to the squishy first instead of his usual take out the most dangerous first, or else he would have vaulted the drones and gone straight for Jetfire.

Instead he cleaved his new red-glowing blades upward through the drone's chest-plate, shifting his arm at the last moment into a cannon and fired directly under its chin. Ooooh, these glowing blades sliced through armor like it was soft organic flesh. He adjusted his calculations accordingly. Foregoing further use of the hand cannon, Sides shifted it back to a hand and grabbed the lifeless drone's chest plate and hurled it at the next closest, following with a single missile to the remote receiver on it's head now that it was on a predictable enough trajectory to target.

Two down, that left four more. And Jetfire and Thundercracker. Those two were beginning to work through his missiles and do something useful. Like fire their lasers, incendiary rounds and cruise missiles that Sideswipe blocked by shoving a drone in front of him. He really needed to get to those two before he ran out of drone shields. He dropped the dead drone and charged two more, hooking a blade on one's arm and pulling it into the other so he could cleave through both at once with his new glowy wrist-blades.

Finishing off the last drone was trivial, as the whole point of drones was for them to use their numbers and surround you. That didn't work so well when you didn't give them the chance to do that. He was not surprised, though disappointed, to see the twin jet trails left behind by the retreating Jetfire and Thundercracker. 'Cracker was damaged already, and Jet was never one to stick around for a brawl if he didn't have to.

Burning wreckage littered the ground around them as Sideswipe crouched down to inspect the human. "Are you damaged?" he asked uncertainly, prodding the wide-eyed and shaking organic with one finger. "If Sunny were here we'd have gotten the flyers too, but I aimed to pin the most difficult one and missed, so... oh well. Next time I'll scrap them for sure."

There still wasn't any response from the organic, but his scanners didn't immediately find anything wrong with it; its vitals were a bit high, but nothing life threatening, he thought. Shrugging it off, he stepped back to transform back into a car and popped a door open. "Anyway, we should head out. There is a chance they might regroup for another attempt, but I doubt it. Those three are cowards to their spark."


	8. Back to base

**A/N - **I don't own own Transformers. Beta'd by Starcee. Enjoy the story. :3

* * *

**Chapter 8: Yeah, shut up, Sideswipe.**

Leon's logic reasserted itself in his mind when he almost turned around and ran. This was a car, how do you outrun a car? A car that could turn into a giant robot death machine? He slid nervously into the seat and tried not to flinch when the door closed and locked itself while the seat belt strapped him in place. They were on their way back to the road when Leon found his voice.

"Uh... what just happened?"

"What do you mean? I trashed some drones and failed to get any of the important targets. You were standing right there the whole time. Not my finest moment, I should have gone for 'Cracker instead of Warp, but whatever," Sideswipe replied. "Are your memory units malfunctioning?"

"No, I mean... 'what are you?' is probably the better question. Cars don't just turn into giant robots and then have a huge death match over my head. This is not something that happens to me on a regular basis!" Leon growled at him.

"Oh, _that_. Guh. I don't want to answer. Go ask Bee when we meet up with him, scouts are versed in how to answer that question. I might, I don't know, mess it up and get in trouble or something."

And now Sideswipe was back to being the least helpful talking Lamborghini ever. Great. Leon folded his arms and leaned back in his seat, resolving to ask the Camaro when he next got the chance.

Bumblebee was sitting idly outside the motel wondering exactly how long human water cleaning rituals were supposed to go on. He was considering telling Arcee to go check on her when the water finally stopped. A few minutes later, Haydn stepped out of the bathroom feeling like a new person. Well, except for having to wear the same clothes from yesterday and having a sprained ankle and all that other stuff she'd like to forget happened.

She snagged the leftover box of rice and took a mouthful before checking her phone for messages. Of course there were messages.

**Bee: How long until you can be ready to go? Sides want us to meet him outside of town, he managed to get his artifact. There was an incident with the local peacekeepers and he can't come to us, but he didn't exactly go into much detail about it.**

**Leave? Already? I haven't gotten new clothes yet. :( Or my pain medication.**

**Bee: We just need to leave the city, can you get those in another city? We could probably even take you home now, if you want.**

**Oh! That would be nice. Except not back to the apartment, can you take me to this address instead? **She sent the address of her grandfather's place.

**Bee: Sure, that's still pretty close to the bridge by where we picked you up.**

**Bridge?**

**Bee: Uhm...**

**Arcee: The space bridges. It's how we get from here to our ship so quickly. It's a small ship of sorts that can be moved to anywhere on a planet's surface and can be then used for instantaneous travel from one bridge point to another. There's a permanent bridge point built into the ship. However, we're currently limited to within this solar system as the further the bridge, the more energon it uses and we're running low on our reserves.**

**Space... bridge...? Like space ships? Your base is in space?**

**Arcee: Yes. Ratchet thought it would upset you too much to know so Bumblebee wasn't supposed to tell you. I was given no such order and think you can handle the truth.**

**Bee: It's not that I didn't think she could handle it, I just didn't want things to get even more complicated than they already were for her. I was going to tell you. There's more, but I think it would be better if we told both you and the other artifact at the same time. So we don't have to repeat ourselves.**

**Arcee: I agree. I'm also concerned about leaving Sideswipe alone with an organic for too long.**

**Bee: Yeah, my thoughts exactly.**

**I'll hurry. :S**, Haydn sent, then set the phone down so she could attempt to towel her hair dry and run her fingers through it to get out the worst of the snarls. She was making a list of new things to keep in her bag, and comb was going on it right after toothbrush and toothpaste. At least the motel had soap and shampoo in the shower, now she just really needed some deodorant. She put that on the list as well.

She gave up, pulling a hair tie out of her bag and putting her hair up in a messy ponytail. Taking her crutches from where she'd leaned them against the counter, she hobbled out of the bathroom area and sat down on the bed. She quickly repacked the few things she'd taken out, her laptop and phone charging on the nightstand, the school books she had been thinking about studying, and that library book she hadn't finished yet.

In about ten minutes, she was ready to go. Arcee was already coming over to help her before Haydn could look up at her. It wasn't hard at all to get into a wheelchair that didn't move when you put your weight on it. Again she pretended to push the wheels as Arcee wheeled them out and to the patiently waiting yellow Camaro.

Haydn climbed in the back so she'd have room to put her foot up, and Arcee folded herself up and hopped in the front when no one was looking. It wasn't the most comfortable arrangement, but hardly anything was comfortable with a sprained ankle. She tried not to think about the fact that they were going to go meet up with Leon again, she didn't know if she'd be able to answer his questions... or if he'd be mad at her.

**Is it alright if I stay in here when we get there? **Haydn typed out.

"I don't mind, but I'd have thought you'd want to be with the other squishy," Bee answered.

**I'm not good with meeting new people**.

"But you've already met this guy. He's the one who helped you at that organic repair place, remember?"

**That was when I was the injured girl that needed help. Now I'm the weird girl who knew about the cars following him but didn't say anything. I don't know what I'm supposed to do in this situation!**

"I don't think I understand. Would it help if we connected your communication devices and you could talk to him like you talk with us?"

**I don't know... maybe?**

"Well, that's not a 'no' so I'm doing it," Bee replied.

**Ah! Wait!**

**Bee: Hey other squishy, I went ahead and connected you to Haydn's communications device. Here, talk to each other.**

Haydn stared in disbelief down at the phone as Leon's name was added to the list of text recipients. She couldn't even think up a message in her head to send. A message came from him first.

**Leon: Hi, again, Haydn. How's your foot?**

Haydn almost set the phone down, but forced herself to reply instead. She couldn't just avoid him forever.

**Haydn: Uhm, good, I think. How are you?**

**Leon: I'm alright. A bit shaken up and very confused, but otherwise I can't complain. Do you know what these things are? This guy is surprisingly unhelpful.**

**Sides: Hey! I saved your life twice today, and not so much as a thank you.**

**Bee: Shut up, Sides.**

**Haydn: Uhm... actually I didn't really ask. XS **

**Bee: We're autonomous robotic beings from the planet Cybertron.**

**Sides: Aha! That's the line you guys memorize that I couldn't remember.**

**Arcee: Shut up, Sideswipe.**

**Haydn: I'm not sure I understood that.**

**Leon: They're aliens. Giant robot aliens.**

**Haydn: Oh. That probably explains why their base is a spaceship.**

**Leon: Okay, so new question. Who are those other guys that are trying to kill us. The ones with the freaky metal space chicken?**

**Sides: What's a 'chicken'?**

**Bee: Those are the Decepticons. They believe the strongest should rule, and naturally that means them. We are the Autobots and we believe that all races should live together peacefully, and that freedom is the right of all sentient beings.**

**Leon: Really? This guy wants to live in peace?**

**Sides: Are you talking about me?**

**Bee: Sides and his brother were built after the war started to specifically fight the war. He's a bit... rough around the edges, but Sides believes in the Autobot cause as much as I do.**

**Sides: Of course I do. I don't believe in squishing squishies just because we can. That's wrong, and not to mention messy. 'Course that doesn't mean I won't smack one if it tries to hit me first, but that would be incredibly dumb. **

**Arcee: As poetic as always.**

**Sides: I'm not programed to talk pretty. That's your guys' job. My job is to hit stuff that you guys are too weak to handle on your own.**

**Leon: Okay. I guess I can see that.**

**Sides: Shouldn't these guys be talking to Jazz or Prime or something? I thought they handled this first contact thing.**

**Arcee: Wow, Sideswipe actually brought up a valid point. I'm impressed.**

**Bee: Yeah. Me too. We were making a special case for Haydn and her problem with meeting new people, but since Leon is here, he could talk to Jazz and Prime.**

**Leon: Wait, who are these guys?**

**Sides: Prime. Optimus Prime. _The_ Prime. The guy who holds the key to the Allspark and the Matrix of Leadership?**

**Bee: Sides, they don't know what that means. Prime is a title, the title of our current leader to be precise. Jazz is his head of security, along with Prowl, but Jazz also handles foreign relations. They're who you're supposed to be talking to about these things.**

**Leon: What do you think, Haydn? Want to go meet their leader and head of foreign affairs?**

**Haydn: Will the police car guy be there?**

**Bee: Prowl usually is, but doesn't have to be. He's our tactician, so he goes along to collect information to store for later in case we need it.**

**Leon: In case we end up at war with each other, you mean.**

**Sides: Yes. That's war. That's how it works. If it makes you feel any better, if we can collect this information, so can our enemies. If we're going to work together to fight them, it's useful to know your weaknesses so we can... I don't know, fix them? This is basic strategy, even the scouts know this.**

**Bee: Sides is right. If we know your weaknesses, we know where the Decepticons will strike; and, yes, while we don't want to fight another enemy, we are prepared to defend ourselves if, for some reason, your people decide to attack us.**

**Leon: Okay, I have another question. What is an artifact and how did I become one and how can I stop being one?**

**Bee: Ratchet is working with Wheeljack to figure that out. An artifact is something infused with matrix energy from the Allspark. I don't think we've ever seen a living artifact before, though. That's new.**

**Leon: So basically you don't know. Great. So now what are we doing?**

**Haydn: I think we were going to my grandfather's house so I could get clothes and pick up the pain medicine.**

**Sides: No. Base first.**

**Bee: Why do you want to go back to the ship?**

**Sides: So I can finish my mission and stop being a lame scout and go back to being awesome.**

**Arcee: I think he's bored and doesn't want to keep babysitting humans.**

**Bee: Yeah, probably. Do you mind, Haydn, if we go back to the ship to drop off Sides?**

**Haydn: I don't mind. It won't take long, will it?**

**Bee: Probably not.**

**Haydn: Okay.**

**Leon: I don't suppose there'd be a change of clothes your grandfather could let me borrow there?**

**Haydn: Uhm... I think there are some that might fit you.**

**Leon: Good, I wouldn't want to be stuck being covered in blood until the next chance I could get clothes.**

The conversation ended, and Haydn closed her phone wondering if she should have told Leon her Grandfather wasn't alive anymore. Oh well, he'd probably figure it out when they got there. In the meantime, there was a long drive ahead of her and a library book she hadn't finished reading yet.


	9. Haydn shouldnt be allowed in the med bay

**A/N -** I don't own Transformers. I own Haydn and Leon.

My betas are currently missing, but I will have them look over it and will swap out the chapter if anything needs fixed. :S Anyway, enjoy!

Also, yes, you may quote my stories in your profiles, though I would wait before calling Sides stupid... ;)

* * *

**Chapter 9: What's this? Sideswipe being the observant one?**

When the Camaro suddenly drove off the road _and into a lake, _Haydn sat up and took notice. "Oh, that's right," Bumblebee spoke. "You weren't really online to notice this the last few times. It's alright, I'm completely air tight. We usually park our bridges in a large body of water, if there's one close enough; it hides them both from human eyes and Decepticon sensors. Though, the muck at the bottom is kind of annoying."

Movement caught her eye and she looked up through the back window to see a red Lamborghini sail over their heads propelled through the water by rockets on either side. "Yeah, Sides and 'Streaker cheat. They don't like getting dirty."

Up ahead, Haydn could see the 'bridge' Bumblebee was talking about come into view. It was a tall circular structure large enough to fly a plane through, and Haydn wondered how they'd managed to get it down here without anyone noticing. The metal ring was thin, though and she thought maybe it collapsed into a smaller form for easy travel.

As Sideswipe reached the portal, he landed on the small platform beneath it to wait for them. Bumblebee took a bit longer to get there, working through the muck. When he reached the ramp leading up to it, he stopped to attempt to shake at least some of the gunk off of him. Once ready, the Aventador turned back to the portal and it activated, sending a ripple of... something through the giant ring. The Lamborghini waited while Bumblebee went through first.

It was similar to what Haydn imagined stepping through a liquid mirror would be like. On the other side was the now-familiar sterile metal decor of the Autobot base. Behind them was an exact replica of the archway they had just passed through. Sideswipe came through right after them, and immediately began transforming, pulling Leon out and setting him down in the middle of it. He then reached over and punched the Camaro hard enough to rock it sideways onto two wheels.

"Ow, what was that for?!" Bee protested.

"What part of 'I had an incident with Beaksy' doesn't automatically compute to 'Soundwave is in the area and we should watch what we say on all transmitted frequencies'?! Seriously, how are you idiot scouts not dead yet? " Sides growled, turning to type furiously at the control panel next to the bridge.

"Oh."

"Yeah, 'Oh.' Lucky for you, I managed to salvage this. Hey, Prowl, 'Hide, get down here! We need to plan a counter ambush! I'm uploading the data to you right now; are Mirage and Hound back yet?"

"Processing... understood," came an emotionless voice from the speakers in the room. "We'll be right down. Mirage and Hound are on the ship, yes. However, Hound is currently on the damaged list and will not be ready for active duty for a while."

"Then get Bee's squishy down there and get him ready; you know better than I do we'll need him," Sides countered. "And where's Sunny?"

Haydn sat stunned in the back seat of the Camaro, waiting for the pain from her jarred ankle to fade. "You okay, Squishy?"

Haydn nodded, then pulled out her phone. **What's going on?**

"Well, Sides is right, I really should have thought about that. Razorbeak is a smaller Decepticon that usually accompanies one of three cons. Megatron, Starscream or Soundwave. We already knew where Starscream was, and if it had been Megatron I doubt we would've made it out of there unscathed; so that just leaves one other possibility. Soundwave, who can listen in on all frequencies and is insanely good at cracking encryptions. That includes all of the information on your communication device. Most notably: the address of where we were headed to next with both artifacts and only two guardians."

Leon had come over to lean on the side of the Camaro and listen in on what was being said. He was a bit nervous about the possibility of being stepped on when it looked like they were about to have a lot more giant big-footed robots stomping around above them. The door on the other side of the room opened without warning, but there was nothing on the other side. Blinking at it in confusion, Leon jumped when the portal they had just come through activated on it's own. Then, something he couldn't see passed barely a foot from him and he only got a flickering of an image as it passed through the bridge.

He'd only got a brief glimpse, but it was like no vehicle he had ever seen before. No wheels that he could see, it seemed to hover in midair, and a long sleek silvery body with no decorations other than a single indentation on the hood Leon couldn't see very well. Then it was gone, the portal deactivating after its passage.

"Hi Mirage, bye Mirage," Bee muttered, just a touch of exasperation in his voice. "He's not very social, that one."

"He doesn't have to be social, but, slag, Prowl works fast. Mirage will get us eyes out there while we get ready," Sides commented.

"Bumblebee," the deadpan voice came back to give out orders. "Take the artifacts to the medical bay, convince Ratchet Artifact One is volunteering to repair Hound and is not being coerced. Sideswipe, Arcee, guard Grapple while he sets up a transceiver on the other side of the bridge."

"What? Guard duty? That's lame! Fine, but Sunny and I had better be part of the action!" Sideswipe growled back.

Bumblebee opened his door and Leon jumped back startled when the wheelchair unfolded itself into a nine foot tall silver female robot and stepped out of the Camaro. "You're pairing me up with _him_?" the wheelchair mech protested.

"You two are the closest and it's imperative that we act quickly. It's only temporary," the flat voice assured her. The silver mech grunted but didn't argue further.

"Get in, Leon," Bumblebee prompted, and Leon shook himself out of his surprise and climbed into the yellow car. It still made him nervous when the doors closed and locked themselves and the seatbelt came to life to secure him in place. He looked over his shoulder at Haydn, but she was staring down at the phone in her hands.

As the Camaro took them out of the bridge room they passed a crane heading in the other direction. "Grapple," Bee told them as they passed. Leon watched it hurry past them, and then turned to see the group four mechs walking toward them in deep discussion.

"Prowl, Ironhide, Jazz and Optimus Prime," the Camaro pointed out for them again.

Leon thought the blue and red mech second from the left had to be their leader, Optimus Prime. He was by far the largest of the giant robots Leon had seen yet, towering head and shoulders above the other three bots around him. To the left was the second tallest of the bunch, a mottled mix of greys and blacks with some silvery metal thrown in. The other two were more distinct. One of them was clearly the 'police car guy' as Haydn put it, with the familiar black and white pattern showing piecemeal throughout his armor, and the other was some sort of silver car, Leon couldn't really tell with him in his humanoid form.

As they drew even with them, the police car stopped to lean down and speak with the Camaro. "Prioritize Hound, Bluestreak and Sunstreaker. In that order. In case the artifact's power is limited."

"Sunstreaker is damaged? Slag, no wonder you were so quick to get Sides off base. I'll hurry," Bumblebee replied.

"Bumblebee," the large red and blue one spoke up. "And Haydn and Leon as well. I would still like to arrange a meeting at your earliest convenience. Please arrange it."

"Yes, Optimus," the Camaro answered respectfully, before taking off again. After they were a reasonable distance away, Bee spoke through his internal speakers at them. "You doing alright, Squishy?"

Leon leaned over to peer into the back seat and he was surprised to see Haydn curled up with one knee under her chin looking like she was fighting back tears. She pulled out her phone and busied herself in composing a message. Leon took out his own phone in case he was included in the message. He was.

**Haydn: Blue is hurt?**

**Bee: Yeah, but probably nothing serious. Oh, before I forget to ask again, do you want to try and repair more bots or do you want to wait to see if there are any bad side effects first? Prowl doesn't mean to be pushy when he takes it for granted that you'll say yes, he's balancing a lot of of different probabilities in his processors right now and forgets that just because you're more than sixty percent likely to volunteer your services doesn't mean he shouldn't ask first.**

**Haydn: It's okay. I want to help if I can. Uhm... that really big one said he wanted to meet us?**

**Bee: That's Optimus. He's big, but he's not mean or anything. You guys are the first humans we've made contact with, so it kind of is important that you meet our leader. **

**Blue: Hi, Haydn! Don't worry, I'm not too bad. Cliff and 'Streaker took most of the damage, being frontline fighters.**

**Haydn: Blue! That's good to hear, though not for those two. :S Are they going to be alright?**

**Bee: Oh look, Cliffjumper is back on the damaged list. Why am I not surprised?**

**Blue: Yeah, just don't let Arcee know.**

**Bee: How are Hound and Sunstreaker looking?**

**Blue: Uhm... not so good. Neither are online. Sides isn't around, is he?**

**Bee: No, Prowl got him off base pretty fast. Arcee too. That guy scares me sometimes how good he is with strategy. And, yes, I'm aware that Prowl is probably reading this right now.**

**Haydn: He is?! O.o**

**Bee: Er, yeah. Prowl is kind of like our version of Soundwave, in that he monitors all the transmitted data throughout the ship. Though, really, this thing isn't very secure and like everyone on the ship can read it.**

Haydn snapped her phone shut and set it down on the seat next to her. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment and she could practically feel everyone's eyes on her. Watching.

"Oh, wow, ouch. I don't think there's been this much ship-wide guilt ever."

"Not helping, Bee," Leon murmured quietly.

"Look, imagine having an alien living among your people and there were rules put in place to keep you from communicating with them, but all you needed to do to monitor them was to just tune into the right frequency? Wouldn't you want to monitor them as well? They didn't mean anything by it, they were just curious. Life on this ship is pretty dull when we're not fighting Decepticons. You guys are the most exciting thing to happen since... well... the last time Sides was stuck on the damaged list; and that wasn't a good kind of excitement. 'Streaker makes Sides look down right level headed when he's angry."

Haydn pulled the hood of her jacket up over her head to give herself more of an illusion of solitude, and hunkered down into the seat trying to pretend no one else was with her. There was far too much going on around her at that moment and she needed some time to be alone. Normally she'd take her earbuds out and play music on her phone to calm down, but they were watching her phone and she couldn't cope with that. That just left her alone with her thoughts. Not exactly pleasant company.

The medical bay was a lot busier than Haydn had remembered it, not that she looked up at all to notice much beyond the heightened noise level. Leon helped her out to get out of the car enough to get the crutches under her, but she hardly needed them when Ratchet offered his hand to assist. She didn't look at any of them in the face, noticing only vague colors and shapes. Ratchet asked something about her being sure she wanted to do this, but she just held out a hand toward the damaged mechs.

He must have taken that for a yes, because he brought her nearer to bot painted a patchwork of greens and browns she didn't recognize. Camo, Haydn thought as she pressed a hand against the surprisingly warm armor. The familiar healing white lightning arched from her fingers, into the metal, and all throughout the bot's body. This time Haydn noticed the draw on her energy, probably because she was already fairly stretched to her limit.

She kept it to herself though, as Ratchet pulled her back from the large mech that soon began thrashing as he came online like Cliffjumper had. This was something she could do for them her anxiety couldn't steal from her. She could do this, she had enough energy for all of them. Probably. When Ratchet held her up to Blue, she smiled a little. She wanted to say hi, to at least look him in the eye, or something, but couldn't. Frustrated, she could at least heal him, she reasoned and placed her hand on him.

That left two more, Cliffjumper, the red one she'd already fixed once that day, and the yellow Lamborghini from before. Sideswipe's brother, and Arcee's partner. If she did one she'd probably pass out before getting to the other and she couldn't pick just one. Fortunately they'd been placed on the same table to conserve space because they were both unconscious and Cliff was one of the smaller bots, like Bumblebee.

She motioned for Ratchet to lower her closer to the both of them, and if she stretched out her fingertips she could just barely reach the two of them. Ratchet looked uneasy about it, but didn't try to stop her as she placed one hand on each mech. There. Now Sideswipe would have his brother back, Arcee would have her partner back and Haydn would have her solitude. The blackness that washed over her was a relief after everything she'd been through that day. She briefly wondered if she was going to die, then wondered if she went to heaven, would she find her voice?


	10. Of fire and bacon

**A/N - **I don't own Transformers. I own Leon and Haydn.

My beta's are all missing again. D: So... this is unedited. Is okay, I'll have them edit when they get the chance and I'll repost if they make any changes. They'll have more time to edit future chapters as I will be slowing down to a one-chapter-per-week schedule starting with Chapter 11. I think I'll be posting on Fridays for as long as I have chapters to post.

Anyway, sorry for the short chapter. Enjoy it anyway. -Py

* * *

**Chapter 10: If this is heaven, then I feel gypped. Where's my dragon-unicorn pony?**

Haydn fought valiantly against the light flickering through her blinds attempting to wake her from her sleep. Her head hurt, and she knew that consciousness would only make it worse. She hadn't had these migraines in years, not since she'd been little. The kind that came from being stressed out all the time. Why had they come back? She just wanted to sleep.

She rolled over, putting her back to the light, but it was too late. She'd already started waking, and every moment that brought her closer to reality was more pain. She needed the medicine in the bathroom cabinet, in the bathroom that was all the way across her room. Somewhere something in her mind told her that was more trouble than it was worth on account of her sprained ankle. Sprained ankle? When had that happened? She would have refuted it, but her foot was throbbing in time with her migraine and she had to admit it made sense.

"Haydn?" a soothing female voice spoke from somewhere nearby. "Leon said you would need this when you woke up. Are you awake?"

Tabetha? Haydn wondered. Who was Leon? Who cared, Tabby was there with her pain meds. That was all that mattered. She held out her hand for the pills, only half conscious, and they were placed in her hand. She threw them in her mouth before holding her hand out again for the water and did the same with it before burrowing her head back into her pillow to wait for it take effect.

Blessed numbness crept into her limbs, and when she felt reasonably normal, she decided to sit up and see about taking care of the few other problems that were starting to nag ner. Namely, her hunger and and full bladder. She also felt like she needed a shower and to brush her teeth, but those were just a bit less urgent. She looked around expecting to see a Tabetha, what she found was silver robot almost twice her size watching her from its seated position on the bedroom floor.

Then Haydn started to remember. She lowered her gaze to her hands and picked nervously at the blanket. Why had she done that? Now everyone was probably mad at her for worrying them. She looked over at the nightstand where her phone lay, plugged into its charger. She wanted to message them, to apologize, but the idea of all of them watching terrified her.

"Jazz has issued orders regarding the privacy of your communications device. Only a single mech will be allowed to monitor it for signs of tampering at a time, all others will wait to receive messages from you. Currently Hound is monitoring it for security risk as he is the best equipped for the job," Arcee told her. "With your permission, Prowl would like to install security protocols and encryption on it so you can know for certain no one will be listening in."

Haydn wasn't sure she liked the idea of even one of the bots spying on all her messages, but she supposed it was better than having the enemy listen in unknowingly. Maybe she should let them put more security on it, but right then she didn't want to think about it. She just wanted to shower and dress in something she hadn't been wearing for days straight.

They were in her room at her grandfather's house, she realized, looking around the room. They must have moved her here after she'd passed out. Her crutches were leaning against the dresser beside the bed within arm's reach and she pulled them to her so she could get up. It was an effort to get to her feet, and just looking at the dozen feet or so she had to make it across the room and to the bathroom made her ache.

"Here," Arcee offered, getting into a crouching positions so she could take her wheelchair form. "Both Ratchet and Leon agree you should stay off your feet as much as possible."

Haydn sank gratefully into the chair and let herself be pushed to the bathroom. When Arcee offered to help her inside, however, Haydn shook her head and quickly closed the door. Yeesh. For once, she was grateful for all the handrails that were installed in the bathrooms that had once been for her grandmother before she'd passed away. As well as the shower bench that had been installed, so she could sit and shower.

She threw on a bathrobe, and opened the door to the much welcomed aroma of bacon, eggs and hashbrowns. Arcee was waiting for her on the other side, and moments later she was savoring delicious bacony goodness from the comfort of her own bed.

"Leon made it," Arcee commented from beside the bed. "He says he found your 'pantry' and has an amusing story involving frozen bacon, fire and Sideswipe that he will have to tell you sometime."

Haydn couldn't help but smile at that, and at the glass of orange juice she'd just noticed on the nightstand. She loved orange juice. She felt a lot better after eating, and even debated whether she should get dressed or not, but she was really reluctant to try and pull jeans on over her ankle, so for now the long bathrobe would do. Then she looked over again at the phone on the nightstand.

Taking a breath, she pushed thoughts of being watched out of her mind and picked up the phone. She messaged Arcee first.

**Haydn: Who's here right now?**

**Arcee: Bumblebee, Bluestreak, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Mirage, Hound, and Grapple. **

**Haydn: I don't have numbers for those last four. :S**

**Arcee: I strongly advise against contacting Sunstreaker, and Mirage as well to a lesser extent, but I will have Hound add their numbers to your list in case of an emergency. Sunstreaker should only be contacted if you can't get a hold of anyone else first. Mirage will often be unreachable as he tends to disable his communications when he's deep under cover. Hound and Grapple, however, are both more than willing to talk with you. Would you like me to have Hound add them?**

**Haydn: Yes, please. Just in case.**

It only took a moment for the four names to appear on her contact list. She selected all of them, except Mirage and Sunstreaker, then added in Leon and the other bots present and composed a message.

**Haydn: Sorry, I did it again, I did something dumb and made you all worry. :( I feel better now, though. Thank you for taking care of me.**

**Bee: Squishy! I know you want to help, but you need to stop hurting yourself. :( **

**Blue: You didn't need to do that, we really only needed Hound for this. You could have stopped after that. **

**Sides: Speak for yourself, my brother is up and the squishy isn't dead. Fair trade as far as I'm concerned. Thank you, by the way; and now that I'm the first one to actually thank her for what she's done, you can all stop glaring at me and feel bad.**

**Hound: Sides is right. Thank you, Haydn. In the future, though, please refrain from pushing yourself into offline mode. Get some rest, we'll keep you safe until you're fully functional again.**

**Grapple: Indeed. Don't you worry one bit, I'll have this place fixed up in no time! My first real project in years, I can't wait to get started! I have a few design ideas ready when you have a moment to go over them.**

**Haydn: ... fixed? O.o**

**Leon: They had a huge fight here, they were preparing for it, remember? They had a guy... Trailbreaker? Yeah, he has a forcefield that he used to save the main house, but the garage and other buildings are totally trashed. Sorry. **

**Bee: You have a very large living area here. Why were you in the small box house thing before?**

**Haydn: The house is okay? Thank goodness, I would have been very sad. The only problem with this place is that it's too big. I didn't like living here by myself, so I went to live at college. Now I think I'm better off here since you guys are pretty big and there's lots of space. We don't get many visitors here either, so it should be pretty private.**

**Hound: It is nice to be out of that cramped ship, even Mirage will admit that. He doesn't like all this brown and green organic stuff, though. I think it's pretty.**

**Bee: Mirage just doesn't like the noise it makes when he has to move through it.**

**Sides: What I wouldn't mind is a nice clean and polish station. This organic stuff gets all over everything.**

**Leon: Ha, I should take one of them through a carwash. See how they like that.**

**Sides: A what? You mean to tell me you _have_ cleaning stations here? Why was I not informed?!**

**Haydn: There's a really nice one in town my grandpa used to take me to. They do interior detailing too.**

**Sides: Leon, outside, now. We're going to get this encrusted slime stuff you left all over my seats removed immediately. Oh, and Sunny wants to come too.**

**Leon: I would, but I left my wallet back where you fought the space chicken. I don't have money for it.**

**Haydn: Oh there's some if you look under the sink. There's a hidden latch behind the pipes where Grandpa kept one of his emergency safes. He kept this place well prepared in case I needed to take care of myself for a while. The combination is 103049. **

**Sides: There you go. Now hurry up, we're waiting.**

**Leon: Yeesh, Haydn, who was this grandfather of yours? And I'm only taking one at a time, I don't want to have to answer any questions about why there are two cars and only one driver.**

**Sides: Me first! Then Sunny.**

**Leon: Are you sure you can handle being still and silent that long with people crawling all over you?**

**Sides: Yes. As long as they don't go poking around in places they don't belong and I end up clean afterwards.**

**Leon: Okay, I found it. That's a lot of cash. Do you want me to pick up anything else while I'm out?**

**Haydn: Did you still need clothes? Get what you need. And real eggs, the dehydrated stuff in the pantry isn't very good. Milk, cheese, bread... and anything else you think we might need.**

**Leon: Alright. I'll be back in a few hours or so. **

The conversation ended after that, and Haydn put her phone down so she could pull her backpack to her and fish out her laptop. She needed to check her email to see when her next appointment with Dr. Ross was, it should've been coming up soon. Not to mention the homework she was now two days behind on. Fortunately internet classes tended to be more forgiving about things like deadlines.

One email in particular stood out as she was browsing through them. It was from her therapist.

**Haydn, you need to contact me immediately and let me know if you are safe. I tried to reach your phone but it wasn't reachable. If you know anything about what happened to Tabetha, please let me know right away. The police want to get your statement and I have agreed to walk you through it so it will be less stressful for you. We will talk more about it at our next appointment.**

The next appointment was set for tomorrow. Haydn began hyperventilating.


	11. Bubble bath, extra wax

**A/N - **Huzzah, another chapter for my dear readers. :3 I don't own Transformers, I do own Haydn and Leon.

Beta'd by the amazingly incredible Starcee, ty.

Not much to say about this chapter so just go on and enjoy it. :) -Py

* * *

**Chapter 11: I'm still not entirely sure what happened to that bacon...**

Arcee was at her side in an instant. "What's wrong?"

Haydn shook her head, deleting the email and closing down the school website. Well. So much for having a life. There was no way she could face her therapist, or the police. She was no good at lying, and how was she supposed to explain the body of her dead roommate in their apartment? Tell the truth? No. She wouldn't do that to the Autobots. Besides, they'd probably just think she'd cracked under all her anxiety and send her to the loony bin.

She couldn't even continue her online classes because someone was sure to wonder where she was if she could still do her homework. Probably trace her IP back to her location as well. No, what she needed was to just disappear. She hesitated, then took out her phone and messaged Hound.

**Haydn: I would like you guys to install that extra security Arcee told me about on my phone now. Can you also disable the GPS tracking device on it?**

**Hound: We kind of already did. Sorry, it made it far too easy for you to be tracked. I'll install what I can of the security and have Prowl look it over when you get back on the ship. He's in charge of keeping security up to date. Arcee says you're acting weird, are you alright?**

**Haydn: It's... complicated. I'll be alright. **

**Hound: Would you like me to also install the security programs on the new communications device you've just recently activated? **

**Haydn: My laptop? Yes, please do. **

**Hound: Done. Just to inform you, I'll also be monitoring this new device for signs of compromise, okay?**

**Haydn: Okay. Thank you.**

**Hound: No problem.**

Haydn forced herself to relax just a bit as she plugged her phone back into the charger. She'd barely been up an hour and already she felt exhausted. She was supposed to be resting, so she settled herself down into her blankets and did just that.

When Leon pulled up to the carwash in a Lamborghini Aventador and then climbed out looking like a hobo, he received more than a few odd looks. He sighed, at least he'd changed out of those blood soaked clothes from before. The clothes he'd found in a closet in one of the rooms he'd assumed had to have belonged to Haydn's grandfather were a couple sizes too big. At least he'd managed to find a nice belt to keep his pants up. That was always a good thing.

He already looked like a rich eccentric loon, so he was surprisingly accepting of the oddness of his situation as he pulled out his phone and began texting his vehicle about what kind of cleaning it would like. The answer? All of it. Of course.

He rolled his eyes and walked into the establishment. Already a crowd of gawkers were gathering at the window to see the shiny red vehicle, and Leon could see the employees eyeing the car excitedly. He went up to the front desk where a man was attempting, and failing, to not look over eager to take his order. "What can I do for you today, sir?"

"Uhm... clean it. All of it. How long will that take?" Leon replied.

"All of it?"

"Yes, all of it. If you have a service to clean it, then do it. Wash, wax, polish, detail... everything. How long will that take?"

"A full service like that would require you to leave your vehicle with us over night."

Leon scowled at the thought of leaving Sideswipe here alone overnight. "Yeeeeah, no. That's not going to happen. Tell you what, I'm going to go across the street to do some shopping. I should be gone about two, maybe three hours. Whatever you can get done by then, I'll pay for. If you guys do well enough, I'll bring by the rest of the car collection to get cleaned as well."

The man seemed to consider that for a moment, then peered beyond Leon once more at his car and nodded. "Sounds like a deal. I'm pretty sure I can get the guys motivated if you keep bringing in cars like that. Any extensively damaged areas you'd like us to work on specifically?"

"Uh... a friend had a bad nose bleed the other day in the passenger seat. If you could take care of that, that would be nice. I promise the other cars won't have this problem."

"Alright. Anything else?"

"No, I'm good. I'll be back whenever I'm done shopping," Leon replied dismissively as he turned to go.

"Wait, your keys, sir?" the man asked.

"What? Oh. Uhm... just a sec." Leon quickly pulled out his phone.

**Leon: I don't suppose you have a set of keys that belong to you, do you?**

**Sides: Keys?**

**Leon: Yeah, I didn't think it would be that easy. I'm going to tell them you're voice activated, okay? If they tell you to turn on, turn on, but only do what they say. Don't go driving yourself or something crazy like that.**

**Sides: Yeah, yeah, act like a dumb machine. I get it. Hurry up already.**

Leon turned back to the man at the register. "It's voice controlled. It doesn't have a key. Just say 'engine on' and start driving."

"Wow, really? That doesn't sound very safe. What if someone tries to steal it?"

"Oh, believe me. I pity the poor sap that tries to steal _that _car. Its security is quite extensive," Leon assured him.

Leon left then, with more than a few backward glances and second thoughts. Oh well, Sideswipe was a big mech, he could take care of himself. Probably. At least it wouldn't be Leon's fault if the Lamborghini revealed himself. Throwing up his hands, Leon determined to stop worrying and focus on his shopping instead. Thank goodness there was a Walmart across the street. He could get everything he needed there.

Two and a half hours later, Leon was sitting in the Walmart McDonalds munching on fries while having an argument with his car over whether he was ready to be picked up or not. It reminded him of the time he'd tried to get his three year old nephew out of the bath.

**Sides: But they're cleaning all the organic stuff out of my engine...**

**Leon: But I need to get back and make sure Haydn eats lunch.**

**Sides: Text Arcee to do it. **

**Leon: Uhm... no offense, but I really don't trust you guys in the kitchen. Especially after what happened this morning with the bacon.**

**Sides: Oh come on, it wasn't frozen afterwards at least.**

**Leon: No, it was definitely not frozen. **

**Sides: How was I supposed to know I wasn't supposed to go over a certain temperature? **

**Leon: I'm not having this discussion with you again. I'm out of fries, so I'm heading over.**

**Sides: Five more minutes?**

**Leon: No. See you in a bit.**

**Sides: Lame.**

Leon got up from his seat and tossed the empty fry box into the trash. Looking over at the nearly over stuffed shopping cart, he realized he had a problem. A cart full of groceries, clothing and other random stuff, and no car to put it in. Sighing, Leon took it over to the customer service desk where, fortunately, they were willing to hold onto it for him until he got back with his car.

When he arrived at the car detail shop, he had to admit, the Lamborghini looked nice. Like it had just rolled off the dealership. The guy who he'd talked to before came out to greet him. "So, we ran into a bit of a snag while trying to work on your car."

"What kind of 'snag'?" Leon asked, glancing at the autobot suspiciously.

"Well, we tried to change the oil and check the fluids, except we couldn't get any of the caps off; and when we tried to remove some parts to reach into the deeper areas of the engine, it just wouldn't come apart."

Leon could understand that. He wouldn't want people taking him apart either. "No, don't worry about that. Just get what you can reach. He looks good, though."

"He?" the man asked, a hint of amusement in his voice. "Aren't cars usually 'she's?"

"Not this one," Leon replied quickly, eyeing Sideswipe in case he reacted. He didn't. "In fact, just about all of the cars I'll be bringing by are 'he's." He didn't think he'd be able to bring Arcee around. At least not while she was a wheelchair.

"Sure. They're your cars," the guy replied with the air of someone humoring a crazy person.

Leon stopped trying to make sense, and followed the man inside to pay them for the work they'd done. Soon he was climbing back into the Lamborghini and wondering if this thing had a trunk large enough for the stuff he'd bought. "Alright, we need to head back to the store to pick up what I bought."

"I'm not a hauler mech," Sideswipe muttered.

"You volunteered to take me out and got a free car wash. You gotta take the good with the bad," Leon told him.

"Fine, but I don't have to like it."

It was another trial of patience when they got back and Sideswipe had to wait for Leon to unload all of the bags into the house. It didn't help any that the yellow Lamborghini came over to glare at him while he did it. Leon was not aware Lamborghinis could glare quite like that, but apparently the yellow one was very good at it.

He'd just set the last of the bags down inside the threshold of the house when the car revved its engine to get Leon's attention and popped its door open expectantly. "What? Oh, it's your turn, isn't it? Ugh, fine, but after I make sure Haydn's taken care of. She needs to eat and I don't want her going up and down those stairs with her foot like that."

"No, now," a voice like gravel demanded.

"No, not now," Leon replied. "I don't know how you guys 'eat', or whatever it is you do, but humans needs to eat a meal morning, noon and night. It's noon, and we're eating. It's not good for us to miss meals, particularly when we're injured or sick like Haydn is. You can wait until we're done."

Its engine rumbled low as it thought that over, then spoke. "How long?"

"I don't know, an hour? Maybe two? There are a few things I need to talk to Haydn about, and I don't know how long that will take."

"You expect me to put up with _that,_**" **the car nudged its bumper to where the gleaming Sideswipe was trying to catch a decent reflection of himself in the front windows, "for one-maybe-two hours?"

"Yes. Yes, I do. He's your brother, you think you'd be used to it," Leon muttered, turning to take the bags into the kitchen.

"_One _hour, Fleshling!" the car growled after him. Leon rolled his eyes, he should never have mentioned the car wash.

Haydn woke up to pain again, but again Arcee was there with pain pills and a glass of water. Leon must have set her up with some kind of schedule. She was grateful for that. Blinking sleep from her eyes she looked around the room trying get her bearings. Still in her room, at her grandfather's house, that was good.

"Leon says he is making lunch and bringing it up here so he can talk to you about a few things. He wants to know if you're okay with that," Arcee told her.

Haydn glanced down at the bathrobe she was still wearing and was decidedly not okay with that at the moment. She pulled out her phone.

**Haydn: I need to get dressed first. Tell him to give me five minutes, please.**

Haydn set down the phone and looked over at the dresser that was not quite close enough for her to manipulate from the bed. She used her crutches and fished through the drawers for set of clothes. It was difficult getting dressed without being able to stand, but she managed it. Arcee had even politely turned the other direction when Haydn asked her to. It probably didn't really matter, but Haydn just wasn't comfortable being watched by anyone while she was getting dressed.

She was fully dressed and back in bed when Leon knocked on the door and entered. He placed the tray of food - a sandwich with various fixings on the side - on the bedside table, and went to pull a chair over from the corner.

"You'll be interested to know they liked my car wash idea," he said, taking a seat. "A bit too much, really. Sunstreaker is waiting outside right now for his turn as we speak. I think Bee and Blue are too polite to ask, so I'll ask them tomorrow if they'd like a turn. Hound too. Sorry, Arcee, I don't think I can take you or Mirage through the car wash."

"That's understandable," the mech replied from her seated position on the floor beside him.

Haydn didn't reply or look over at him as she busied herself with her sandwich. Leon didn't mind, he'd met all kinds of people with disabilities while working at the hospital. Just because she didn't look like she was listening, didn't mean she wasn't hearing every word.

"What I really want to talk to you about, though, is that there's a third artifact," Leon said. He got a reaction out of her that time, she lifted her eyes to blink at him in surprise. Only for a moment, and then she was back to the sandwich.

"We saw her yesterday. That's what the big scuffle with the Starscream guy had been about. The signal Hound and Mirage had been sent out to investigate had turned out to be the third artifact. Unfortunately, our side didn't win that fight. She's being held captive by the Decepticons and they used her artifact lightning powers in the ambush. They didn't stick around very long though after Optimus showed up. That guy... I can't say I blame them for running away, he was crushing them in combat. They took the third artifact with them."

Haydn took a bite of her sandwich before picking her phone up to reply. **That poor girl. :( I hope she's okay. It doesn't sound very nice, being with the Decepticons.**

"No it doesn't. Remind me to apologize to Sides later for being such a jerk when he picked me up."

Arcee vented her exhaust in what sounded suspiciously like a snort. "You don't need to apologize to that guy. He deserved it."

"Still, if not for him, I'd be in the same position as the third artifact," Leon admitted, shrugging. "Optimus, Ironhide, Jazz and Prowl are working out how to free her. Speaking of which, they're still quite anxious to officially meet us. You think you'll be up to that anytime soon?"

**I don't know. Tomorrow, maybe?**

"Alright, I'll let them know we can meet them tomorrow in the evening. After the marathon of car washes. Oh, and you should also meet with Grapple at some point so you can pick out a design for the new garage. He's got some really neat ideas."

**He can build whatever he wants. I don't mind, **Haydn replied.

"Okay, I'll let him know. Now I'd better get back out there before Sunstreaker comes looking for me," Leon muttered, getting up from his chair. He took the dishes with him and Haydn was left alone with Arcee. She felt tired again and knew she was drifting off to sleep. Maybe this was what happened after using the artifact too much? She'd have to ask someone about it when she woke up.


	12. Poor Prowl gets no love

**A/N - **I don't own transformers, just Haydn and Leon. D':

Beta'd by the lovely Starcee.

Enjoy the story. :)

* * *

**Chapter 12: Here come the big bots**

Haydn was nervous the next day as the evening fast approached. She was no longer feeling as tired as she had the day before, and even her ankle wasn't as painful or swollen. Though now she felt sick to her stomach. Meeting the leader of an alien race? How did you prepare for that? She caught herself dry washing her hands again and forced them to stop. She needed a distraction.

She grabbed her crutches and hobbled over to the balcony. Arcee was outside today, practicing some training exercises with Bumblebee and Bluestreak. The twins had wanted to join in, but they weren't allowed to 'train' anywhere within a mile of the house. Instead, they were watching from the sidelines, with Sideswipe giving helpful 'advice' every once in awhile ("Oh come on, you'll never get his arm off if you pull at _that_angle.").

Bluestreak spotted her coming out, and jogged over to greet her since Bumblebee was busy trying to reach Arcee who was clinging to his back. "Hey, Haydn! Fighting either of them is tricky 'cause they both find a way to get inside your defenses and still remain just out of easy reach of you. It's kind of funny to watch Bee try and fight with Arcee because you can tell he's just wondering if that's how others feel when they fight him and she uses a lot of the same tricks he does..."

Haydn listened to him as he went on about the smaller bots' fighting styles. He lowered his hand for her, and she climbed on, setting her crutches across her lap as she sat in in his palm. He brought her over to watch from a reasonably safe distance, they were doing melee exercises so it was unlikely to get close to them anyway, and held her up so she could watch.

It didn't last much longer, though. Arcee slipped, and Bumblebee was quick to snatch the leg that dangled just within his reach. Within moments he had the smaller mech pinned under his knee with a blaster barrel at her head. She conceded defeat, and he let her up.

Sideswipe let out an exasperated sigh. "C'mon Blue, let's show these midgets how real mechs fight! I'll go easy on you, I won't even use any weapons."

"No, that's okay. I don't feel like spending a week with Ratchet," Bluestreak replied, edging away from the red bot nervously. Bluestreak retreated quickly from the practice ring, taking Haydn over to where the new garage was being built by Grapple, his friend Hoist, and a few other bots Haydn hadn't met before. Leon was over there as well, talking with Grapple about his new designs. Bluestreak lowered his hand down to set her on the ground near Leon.

"Hi, Haydn," Leon greeted her. "Glad you're feeling better."

Haydn nodded, looking at the projected image of the new garage. Above ground, it looked remarkably similar to the old garage with a few stylistic improvements, as well as larger entrances and a raised ceiling. Below ground, Grapple had planned a network of tunnels for the Autobots' use.

"Good evening, Haydn," the crane mech spoke cheerfully. "As you can see, I tried to keep mostly to the original design with a few improvements for... easier access. The roof will be lined with solar panels to help with the energy requirements, and possibly used to produce Energon, if I can get my Energon converter prototype up and running."

"Energon is their fuel and it's also like their food. It powers just about everything they do," Leon explained.

"Yes, and I've been working on refining a more efficient way of extracting it from Earth's resources. My converter will turn your 'electricity' into energon at a much more fuel efficient ratio than we've had previously with your fossil fuels, as well as work with other forms of energy production. I'm very excited to finally have a place to build it and put it to use. Wheeljack is collecting the parts we need from the ship as we speak."

"I hope you don't mind the underground complex I've added," Grapple went on. "I thought that if we planned on staying here for any lengthy moment of time, I would make it more comfortable for those stationed here; and, while the ship isn't a bad place to live, it is a bit cramped. I do imagine more bots will want to spend time on planet if we open the option up to them. Is that alright with you?"

Haydn pulled her phone out of her pocket. **I don't mind. There's a lot of space here, and if you guys want to put it to use, then that's fine with me. Just please be careful of the house, it means a lot to me.**

"That shouldn't be too difficult. I'll add a few entrances to the underground complex that aren't quite so close to the main building to reduce traffic in the area," the yellow bot assured her.

"What I like the most," Leon put in, "Is the clean and polish stations they were talking about before. He's going to install a few. That means I don't have to spend hours taking cars to the car wash, thank goodness!"

A voice interrupted them coming from Leon's phone. "Optimus, Jazz, Ironhide and Prowl are inbound."

"Thanks, Hound," Leon replied, lifting the phone to his face. "We'll meet them out front."

Haydn's knuckles went white on her crutches as she tried to keep from panicking. The police car guy was with them. Didn't Bumblebee say Prowl wasn't going to be there? Well, he hadn't actually said that... just implied it. Still, Haydn couldn't help but feel just a little bit betrayed. She took out her phone and began messaging Bumblebee.

**Haydn: I thought the police guy wasn't going to be there. D: **

**Bee: Prime thinks it's important for you to meet him and all of his officers. You really should stop being afraid of Prowl. Your life may depend on trusting him, at least try to overcome your fear?**

**Haydn: No, I can't do it; I can't relive those memories again! Please don't make me. :'(**

**Bee: ... I'll talk to Prime.**

**Haydn: Thank you. Sorry. :(**

When the four cars rolled up, the police car split off and disappeared behind the back of the house. Haydn relaxed slightly as she stood beside Leon next to Bumblebee. She wanted to step back and hide behind them, but forced herself to stand still. Besides, she wasn't quite that confident in crutches yet to try going backwards.

The three imposing vehicles came to a halt just a few feet from them; a red and blue semi truck, a black GMC Topkick pickup truck, and a silver Pontiac Solstice. As one, the three broke apart into shifting pieces and transformed into their robotic humanoid forms. Haydn didn't look up from their feet, already intimidated by just that. They were very tall, especially the semi.

Leon watched as the large red and blue mech knelt down to be as close to his level as possible. "I am Optimus Prime. This is my first lieutenant, head of security and foreign relations, Jazz," the semi began, looking over at the silver mech to his right.

Jazz nodded a casual greeting. "'Sup."

"And this is my weapons specialist and military expert, Ironhide."

"Remind me later, the twins are overdue for an aft kicking. Playin' at being a scout? What in the pit was running through their processors when they thought up that ridiculous asinine-?!" the black truck growled, shooting a glare in the Lamborghinis' direction.

"Easy, old friend," Optimus interrupted, "There will be time for handing out discipline later." Prime returned his attention to the organics in front of him. "As you have already been told, we are autonomous robotic beings from the planet Cybertron."

"Autobots for short," Jazz supplied helpfully.

"So that's where the term 'Autobot' comes from," Leon murmured. "What are you guys doing here, on Earth, instead of on your planet."

"Planet Cybertron is no longer habitable. Devastated by centuries of civil war, we were forced to leave our planet in search of a new home. We Autobots intended to search for an uninhabited planet, but we were forced to change those plans when the Decepticons began searching for a planet to invade. Unfortunately your planet, with its unusual energy readings, attracted their attention. It would not have been right to leave your people to their mercy," Optimus explained.

"Well that sucks," Leon replied. "We're stuck in the middle of a civil war from another planet? Yeesh. How does this whole 'artifact' thing fit in with that."

"We're not certain, but we suspect it may be linked to the energy readings that first attracted the Decepticons here, and that this is not the first time Earth has had visitors from Cybertron."

"Uh... I'm pretty sure we'd know about it if we'd had giant death robots from space visit us before." Leon frowned, raising an eyebrow.

Haydn was finding it increasingly difficult to pay attention to the conversation. Her mind just wanted to shut it all out and pretend she wasn't there. There was just too much going on around her. If she didn't have crutches to cling to, her hands would be over her ears in an attempt to block it all out. She was already turned around and heading back to the house by the time she'd realized what she was doing.

"Squishy?" she heard bumblebee call after her.

"It's okay, Bee," Leon assured him. "She'll be fine. I'm impressed she made it this long."

Feeling miserable, Haydn hobbled into the house and figured out how to use the crutches to get up the stairs. She passed by her room and stopped by another doorway instead. As she opened the door and the lingering smell of his aftershave entered her senses, Haydn began to relax slightly. Her grandfather's room always made her feel better after having a panic attack. She went over to his desk, leaned her crutches against the side, and lowered herself wearily into his chair.

Pictures of her younger self greeted her as she looked at the items littering his desktop. There were also pictures of her grandmother and mother there too. They made her feel sad, but better. Enough, at least, for her to take out her phone and send Leon a message.

**Haydn: I'm sorry. I just could handle so many people all at once. Can you tell Optimus for me that I want to do whatever I can to help?**

**Leon: Funny you should mention that. How good are you with kids?**

**Haydn: Uhm... pretty good, actually. Why?**

**Leon: Because artifact four is a five year old little girl, and they have no idea how to handle this.**

**Haydn: O.O... I see. Let me think... did Ratchet ever figure out how to make the energy stop?**

**Leon: I don't know. I don't think I've met Ratchet for more than a few minutes. I wasn't aware he was working on a way to make it stop. I'll ask.**

Haydn looked up from her phone at the arrangement of photos in front of her. She selected the one of her mother with her grandparents at their 30th anniversary. She'd been six months pregnant and it was the closest thing Haydn had to a picture of all of them together. She took it with her when she went back to her own room.


	13. Not Mirage's favorite day ever

**Chapter 13: I don't think Bumblebee is enjoying this nature walk.**

Washington state had to have the most beautiful forests Haydn had ever seen. Trees easily over thirty feet tall, and green so dark it was almost black on some plants. It was raining too, unsurprisingly, and it made the leaves all shiny; not that the vehicles accompanying her agreed at all.

"Where are the _roads_?!" Bumblebee demanded, trying to force his way through a particularly large tangle of brush. "Yeesh, why haven't you people cleared this all out and paved over it yet?"

"According to my research, most of them actually _enjoy _this green stuff. They seem to think it's 'pretty'," Mirage muttered from beside him.

"Yeah, well, to the pit with this. I'm walking," the Camaro decided, opening his door so Haydn could get out.

Haydn didn't mind, she had a good raincoat and rubber boots. She felt completely dry and warm as the rain dripped from the branches above her. She limped a few steps over to lean against a tree and watched as the muddy yellow sports car turned into an equally muddy mech. At least the mud helped him blend into his surroundings more.

The forest looked even better from her view in Bumblebee's palm. They didn't have greenery like this where she lived in California. She briefly considered whether it would be worth it to move up here, but quickly discarded that idea. She didn't want to leave her grandfather's house, and she didn't think the bots would like it here very much.

The fourth artifact lived out in the middle of all this with her family. Apparently there were a lot of houses in the middle of all these tall thick trees, but Mirage had extra strong sensors that kept them far enough away. The trees were so thick that Haydn was constantly brushing wet pine needles off of her.

"Ewww, these tiny green spore things are getting inside me. They're not going to sprout and grow into these big brown green things, are they?" Bee asked worriedly. It took Haydn a few tries to get her phone out of her pocket because she was laughing too hard.

**Haydn: No, Bee. Pine needles won't grow into pine trees.**

"Hound and the others should be right over here," Mirage spoke, brushing aside a tree.

He stepped past it, and the air shimmered around him as if he were passing through an invisible barrier. Bumblebee stepped through and the scene around them rippled and gave way to the sight of Hound, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Bluestreak, Arcee and Leon. Arcee was blue again, having dropped her wheelchair mode at Haydn's request and reacquired her blue Buell Firebolt motorcycle form.

They looked over at at the new comers, but most of the rest of them returned their gaze to the sky. "The cons are out in force today," Hound murmured, his eyes following the four specs barely visible in the sky above them.

"Think they'll strike tonight?" Arcee asked.

"If not tonight, then real soon," Hound replied. "How far away is Trailbreaker? We're going to need him if they use the third artifact to drop an EMP blast like they did last time."

"Last I saw him, his ETA was twenty minutes from now," Mirage replied. "I should get into position. Are you ready, Haydn?"

Haydn nodded as the silver bot crouched and transformed into his sleek featureless alien hover car form. Haydn and Mirage had a very important role to play. Their job was to recover the family and bring them straight to Trailbreaker's force field for their protection. Since they needed to be close to the house, they were going to be outside the force field's protection during the EMP blast they expected to happen. Haydn's job was to bring Mirage back online as fast as possible.

"You be careful with Squishy, Mirage," Bumblebee warned.

"I assure you she will be safer with me than anywhere else here tonight. Her safety is my number one priority." A slit appeared on the the otherwise unblemished surface of the hover car and it parted in two to reveal an interior as sparsely decorated as his exterior. There didn't even appear to be any windows.

The white inside made Haydn look guiltily at her mud soaked boots; and she made a mental promise to clean the car out afterwards. Climbing inside, Haydn slid onto the bench seat and a four point harness formed from the seat to secure her in place. The door slid closed behind her.

With the door closed, the white interior lit up like a theater screen above her and Haydn realized why Mirage had no windows. It was like the roof above her turned transparent and she looked up at where Bumblebee and the others were staring down at them.

"I'm sure I don't need to tell you to be quiet. My armor will muffle most sounds from the interior, but it's not perfect. I'm engaging my cloak, they will no longer be able to see, sense, or even send communications to us. I should warn you, I don't drive like normal cars; but I'll attempt to stay level for your comfort."

His engine made no noise that Haydn could discern, though she did feel a slight vibration through the seat as the car slid smoothly forward. He'd not been kidding when he said he didn't like a normal car, often tilting to one side or the other to avoid large clumps of brush, and even turning completely sideways to slide between close growing trees. If he was trying to keep level for her now, she wondered what it was like when he didn't have a passenger to worry about.

Haydn watched the visuals when she could manage, and was interested to note that occasionally little boxes would appear around some places -movement maybe?- and they'd zoom in on it to investigate usually finding a rabbit or squirrel. Most were quickly disregarded, though there was one time they had to swerve to avoid hitting a deer. It was like seeing the world through Mirage's eyes.

They slowed when they reached the area of the house, Mirage finding a particularly dense patch of brush with good tree cover to ease himself into. Normally the cloak was best without cover, but the cloak would be disabled when Mirage went offline during the EMP blast. They couldn't risk being seen during that time.

Then came the waiting. At first it wasn't so bad, the sun was just going down and the family was still up. Haydn felt a bit creepy watching them as they sat down and watched a movie together, but she reminded herself they were there to save lives and that helped a little. When the family went to bed, the waiting got so much worse.

After a while of restless seat shifting and foot tapping that Haydn was surprised didn't drive Mirage crazy, she finally resolved to try and find constellations in the night sky above them. She'd found the three constellations she had memorized, and was just wondering if she could see Cybertron's system from Earth, when a bright flash lit up the sky followed by a loud bang. Then everything went dark.

Her seat dropped out from underneath her as the car ceased to hover, and fell in place. When she placed her hand on the seat to steady herself, white lightning sparked from her fingers across the white surface and quickly spread throughout the entire vehicle. Slowly the roof lit back up and a bunch of symbols darted across it that moved too fast for Hay)n to see, though they didn't look like English.

Suddenly, red symbols appeared and flashed ominously. Two panels opened, one on either side of her, and bladed metal cables popped out to hover threateningly inches from her face. More symbols appeared below the flashing red ones and they went back to flashing across too fast for her to see. At some point, the symbols changed to English and the blades retracted back into the wall. Haydn sighed in relief. The flashing red symbols disappeared and were replaced by the words.

**Sorry. Please wait, memory restoration: 35% complete.**

The number counted up gradually, and when it reached 95, the roof went transparent again. Haydn could see outside, not that there was much to see; it was pitch black out there. Mirage must have still been able to see, as the squares appeared in various places to zoom in and focus on things Haydn couldn't make out. There were four in the sky, and five on the house.

The five on the house Haydn reasoned out to be the family, the four in the sky she assumed were enemies. She swallowed nervously as she realized she could now see the lights of the jets' propulsion systems and they were coming closer fast. Inside the house, flashlight beams could be seen coming on as the family woke up to see what the explosion had been.

Mirage slid forward out of the brush and eased a bit closer to the house, no longer needing the cover with his cloak fully engaged. He positioned himself directly across from the back entrance as the father exited the house in his pajamas and a bathrobe to peer along and over the tree line, then up to the sky. His eyes went wide as he noticed the jets heading straight for his house, and he rushed back inside.

The focus points on the screen followed the father's movements as he went through the house, and Haydn could almost see Mirage calculate the chances of the family using either exit. The car drifted a bit closer to the middle point between the two. He still remained close to the tree line, and Haydn realized why not long later.

The four jets roared into the air directly above the house, breaking apart into pieces and rearranging themselves into robot form to land in the yard. Three of them were the same type of jet, though Haydn didn't know enough about military aircraft to be able to identify them by name, and the fourth was a larger model that also transformed into a larger bot. The three landed in the front, tearing up the driveway with their over-sized feet, and one of them bent down to set something Haydn couldn't see from this angle on the ground.

"Get in there and bring them out," the tallest of the three hissed in the most grating voice Haydn had heard yet from the mechs.

Another focal box appeared on the screen and zoomed in on the small something that had just been dropped off. A label appeared next to it and Haydn's eyes widened in surprise.

**Artifact three. Recalculating mission objectives...**

The tall flying mech stood up, watching something on the ground as it made it's way to the house -artifact three, Haydn realized as she watched square move- and waited with undisguised impatience for his order to be followed. A familiar bright flash lit up the sky, and an explosion rocked the shoulder of one of the three mechs in front.

"My warp systems!" it cried out in a mix of surprise and pain.

"What?!" the tall one Haydn assumed to be the leader exclaimed, turning to scan the trees for the source of the shot. "Impossible! No mech should be online after that blast!"

"They had a forcefield," the last one muttered, dropping into a defensive crouch.

"Curses! Skywarp, Thundercracker, you're with me to intercept the Autobots. Jetfire, get the artifacts back to base, terminate the rest," the leader barked out.

"Terminate? Is that necessary...?" the largest jet asked uncertainly from where he'd landed in the backyard.

"No witnesses, Jetfire, Megatron's orders," came the cold reply. The other two had already taken to the sky, and the third followed not far behind.

"Yes, commander Starscream," Jetfire told his retreating leader reluctantly.

Haydn swallowed in unease as a knot of worry formed in her stomach; one of the kids was still a baby! Her anxiety must have been obvious because Mirage felt the need to flash a message to her on the display. **Don't worry, we won't let that happen.**

The silver bot floated closer to the house now that it was no longer crowded by four sets of legs. The family was being herded out of the house through the back door, judging from the movements of the boxes, and soon the family stumbled out of the house with a sixth person Haydn hadn't seen before. The girl was young, no older than nineteen, obviously asian, and had a slightly haunted look in her eyes that seemed to speak volumes of her recent treatment at the hands of the Decepticons.

The father was nursing what looked to be a dislocated shoulder, and the asian girl held the five year old girl with a firm grip on her arm which she used to pull the child along beside her. The father eyed the new comer with undisguised anger and suspicion, but his gaze was soon captured by the huge jet mech awaiting them in their backyard.

Mirage didn't wait any longer, all of his objectives were out in the open with only one enemy between him and them. He wasn't going to get a better opportunity to strike. Haydn tightened her grip nervously on the seat straps that secured her in place as the hover car shot forward. He slid soundlessly into the space between Jetfire and the family, transforming a rifle onto his roof while his targeting computers settled on the most vulnerable spot he could find.

The big bot didn't even know what hit him as Mirage's cloak held all the way up until he fired, point blank, directly under the Decepticon's chin. It wouldn't kill the battle hardened veteran mech, Mirage knew, but it'd certainly buy the spy time enough to grab his mission objectives and disappear into the tree cover.

Everything inside the silver bot seemed to go crazy as he opened his passenger area and added six new occupants to the one already in there. He tried to be careful as he snatched the family -thank Primus most of them were small- with the metal cables they used in vehicle mode when they didn't have hands. There was a cacophony of surprised yelps, and one of pain from the injured father, as Mirage forced them all into seats and strapped them in. All except for artifact three and the smallest one that Mirage had no idea if it even was human or some organic pet thing.

Artifact three he strapped to the ceiling and didn't remove his metal cables from in case she tried to charge an EMP blast; he could siphon off the energy before it could build into something strong enough to explode. The small one he suspended in the air between the rest so he could keep it level while he drove. It didn't look very tolerant of the g-forces he normally inflicted upon his passengers.

It was with this odd arrangement that Mirage whirled around and sped off through the trees before Jetfire could recover. His processors were taxed to the extreme as he tried to absorb and process everything going on around him and inside of him. He felt a ping of sympathy for the socially glitched organic he'd brought here, but didn't have the spare processing capacity to dwell on it. Haydn was going to have to deal with it until they reached Trailbreaker. Judging by the way she had her hands clasped over her ears and was curled in upon herself, she wasn't handling it very well.

* * *

**A/N - **Hey guys, sorry for the late update. My friends got me Diablo 3 and I've been... distracted. Though I did discover in writing this chapter that I actually think Mirage is one of my favorite characters. Go figure.

I don't think this chapter was edited, so I apologize for the many mistakes in it. :S I look forward to the next couple of chapters though, where we get a better glimpse at Artifact three and her character. Also Decepticons. Weee!

-Py

**P.S.** Have a snippet from this other thing I'm writing on the side that may or may not ever see the light of . I haven't decided yet. The dialogue from it amuses me though, so here you go (Movie-verse-ish):

"Can all of you do... that?" Sam asked gesturing to the holoform.

Emily shrugged. "More or less, but they other's aren't as good at it. Not yet anyway. It's a form of art, and not many Cybertronians are good at art. I learned from the best though, Uncle Sunny takes his art seriously."

The car around them shuddered and shook in what the humans could only assume was silent laughter. The youngling grinned. "Bee thinks it's funny I call him 'Uncle Sunny'."

"Why?"

"Because anyone else would get the scrap beat out of them for calling him that. Sunstreaker's a bit... cranky." The car's laughter redoubled.

"I have a hard time imagining a scrawny artist taking on this," Sam replied patting the dashboard affectionately. The car's laughter died as Bumblebee shuddered in a more fearful tone.

"Fighting is a form of art," Emily answered quietly. "And Sunny is a _very_ good artist."


	14. Meeting new people is fun

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Transformers. D:

**Chapter 14: Artifact three, you are my favorite. :3 Oh, and artifact one and two... and four... can't all of them be my favorite? **

It was becoming clear to Haydn, over the course of the past few minutes or so, that she hadn't fully thought the implications of their plan through. It was as if her worst nightmares had all decided to happen to her at the same time.

After the initial shock had worn off, the father had immediately turned to her and began demanding answers. The mother began shouting for her baby back since Mirage had snatched it from her arms to suspend in the middle of the car to keep it protected from the jostling of the mech's acrobatic driving. The baby was crying, of course, and the other two children looked about ready to do the same. Haydn wasn't far from crying herself, for that matter. The only silent one, besides herself, was the teen strapped to the roof staring around the interior in abject terror.

Haydn was on the verge of a nervous breakdown when she clasped her hands over her ears and clamped her eyes shut in an attempt to restabilize herself. She couldn't just shut down, these people needed her, Mirage needed her. She could breakdown later, not now.

The sudden pressure that pressed upon her as the hover car whipped around at a ninety degree angle to avoid a stray missile from the fire fight going on around them was surprisingly helpful. It felt like the weighted blankets they used to use when she was little in therapy, it also caused the people around her to stop babbling in a fit of surprise. It only lasted a moment, but it was a moment she desperately needed.

The noise began to pick up again, and Haydn quickly fished her card out of her pocket to shove into the father's hands without looking at him. While he read, she pulled out her notepad and a pen and began writing as fast as she legibly could. Her phone was offline right then, having turned it off to keep it safe from the electro-magnetic pulse, and it would take too long to turn it back on.

**Please stop shouting at me. I'm not driving, I'm not the one who snatched you. We are trying to help you guys escape. The quieter you can be, the easier it will be for Mirage to get us out of here. You don't want those jet guys to catch us.**

She tore the hastily scribbled note off and exchanged it for the card the father had just finished reading. She went back to writing some more while he read that one, already anticipating his question.

**I can't explain everything, but I can tell you they're after your daughter. Mirage is taking us to a place with a force field where we will be protected and can figure out how to make them stop coming after her.**

Having read the first message, the father turned to his wife and they had a quick whispered conversation. After that, the mother nodded and after one last nervous glance at her baby, she turned her attention to trying to calm her two other children. He turned back to Haydn in time to receive her second note and, after reading it, turned back to her. Haydn couldn't see his face, however, as she was currently staring hard at the floor between her feet and avoiding all possible eye contact with anyone.

"Who are you people?"

Haydn hesitated before jotting down the best answer she could think up.

**I am the same as your daughter. They were after me and the guys Mirage works with kept me safe. Now I'm helping them do the same for you.**

"Who's Mirage?"

"Mirage is the car," a voice spoke out nervously from above them. "Don't upset them! They're mean when they're angry..." Artifact three, Haydn thought, but she didn't lift her gaze from the floor to confirm. She started writing another note instead.

"The car-? This is one of _those _things," the father whispered, and Haydn could sense him tensing beside her. She finished her message and passed it to him.

**No, no, she's spent a lot of time with the Decepticons, they're mean. Mirage is an Autobot, he's nice. **

Technically Haydn didn't actually know Mirage well enough to know if he was mean or nice, but he seemed pretty nice to her. A bit standoffish, but courteous and definitely not mean. Haydn wondered why the silver mech hadn't yet spoke anything on his own behalf, and she forced herself to look up for any sign of text on the display. She didn't see any, but what she did see was them just arriving at the edge of Trailbreaker's glowing forcefield.

Mirage disengaged his cloak just outside of it, and the purpley-grey barrier flickered before winking out of existence. It dropped only for enough time to allow the sleek alien vehicle to glide inside before going back up again. Leon and Arcee with another bot Haydn didn't recognize waited on the other side as the silver car slid to a halt and opened his doors to let his passengers out. Mirage was quick to shove the little organic bundle into Leons arms when the human came over to help.

"Everyone out, please," the hover car voiced, somehow managing to to make his voice sound very urgent and very polite at the same time.

The mother was out first, quickly taking her baby from Leon to rock the little girl reassuringly in her arms. Then came the two kids, the blonde five year old little girl that Leon helped down from the floating vehicle, and the older light brown haired boy about the age of 9. He stared back at the silver hover car with a mix of fear and awe that made Leon chuckle. Mirage did look the oddest out of all the bot's vehicle modes.

"Do you require assistance?"

Haydn flickered a gaze over to where the metallic cable had slid out of the wall to hover questioningly beside her as she attempted to get to her feet. Another one was offered to the father as well as he seemed to be having difficulties moving around with his dislocated shoulder. Haydn leaned gratefully on the offered support and allowed it to carry her to where she could climb out on her own. The father came not long after. Leon winced at the shoulder.

"Be careful of this one, her allegiances are uncertain," Mirage muttered, dumping the asian girl at Arcee's feet. The poor girl looked about ready to faint at the sight of large metal feet.

After dropping off all his passengers, the hover car immediately began transforming back into his mech form. "I'm going to go help Blue pin the seekers down, Trailbreaker, if you wouldn't mind?"

The bulky black and white mech shrugged, "Sure, stay safe 'Raj."

"I always do."

The silver mech darted off as soon as the energy field faded, and it slammed back into place practically on his heels. He disappeared hardly a second later and Haydn frowned after him. She hadn't gotten a chance to thank him, and he was near impossible to find unless he wanted to be found. She hoped she'd get a chance later. She jumped when a loud shout of pain come from beside her and she looked over to where Leon was releasing the father after having popped his shoulder back in place.

Haydn was glad Leon worked in a hospital, she'd never dislocated a limb before, but it looked painful. Then she turned to the quivering ball of fear and anxiety that was the third artifact curled up at Arcee's feet. The smallish blue mech looked down at her in bemusement, then looked over at Leon questioningly.

"Is this one damaged?"

He shrugged in reply, running a hand through his hair in an attempt to stave off the weariness he felt coming on. Where all the other artifacts going to be girls? He certainly hoped not, he wasn't very good with females. Hence why he'd chosen to bury himself in college. Leon sighed and went to look over the teenager, she didn't appear to have any outward injuries that he could see.

"Hello," he greeted, crouching down to be at eye level with the cringing girl. "I'm Leon, what's your name?"

"Don't. Touch. Me," the girl growled back at him, eyes narrowed in hostility. Leon took a few surprised steps back uncertain of what he'd done wrong. Then the anger drained from her face as she glanced fearfully up at Arcee standing over them.

"Kari," she spoke quickly. "My name is Kari."

Leon maintained a respectful distance. "Well, Kari, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she replied quickly, wrapping her arms around herself as she shot Arcee another nervous look. "I'm sorry about... what I did. They made me do it."

"Don't worry about it," Leon was quick to assure her. "Just don't do it again. I gotta go see if we can do something to make the kid not light up like a roman candle, don't worry about Arcee. She's just keeping look out for our protection."

"I know how to do that. Er, make the kid stop glowing, I mean."

"What?" Leon asked in surprise. A shudder passed through the girl as she dropped her gaze to the ground.

"There were... tests. I don't want to talk about it."

"Ah. Well, that saves us a lot of trouble. Wheeljack seemed skeptical these would work and muttered something about a five percent chance of exploding so... yeah. It won't hurt her, will it?"

"No," Kari answered, getting to her feet. "Just put her to sleep."

She followed him as Leon led the way back to where the family was huddled. When they drew close, the father stepped forward glaring angrily at the teenager. "She's not allowed near my family."

Leon shrugged. "That's your decision, but she tells me she knows how to stop them from coming after your daughter. I don't think she wanted to hurt your family, I think they threatened her. Can you blame her for not wanting to tick off something that could crush her with one finger?"

The man scowled as he thought that over. "Alright, but I'm watching her. What's she planning on doing?"

Leon looked over at the girl to explain. She frowned hesitantly, then shrugged. "It's complicated. It won't hurt her, I swear."

The father was still unhappy, but allowed them to approach his younger daughter. Kari flickered nervous glances at the two bots standing over them and the people as well before kneeling down to be at eye level with the little girl. "Hey there, Little One," the teenager spoke in a soft voice. "It's been a scary day, huh?"

The younger girl shuffled closer to her dad, looking up at him for reassurance before turning back to Kari with a nod.

"Well, the scary monsters are after you because of your necklace. If you hand that to me, and then drain all of the necklace's power into one of these bots, they'll stop coming after you, okay?"

The child scowled up at her like she thought the black haired asian was crazy, but when she looked up again at her father and he nodded, she reached behind her neck and lifted the thin chain over her head and handed the pendant over. It was a small metal charm on a chain in the shape of two snakes entwined with wings extended near the top.

Leon thought it looked familiar, but he couldn't remember from where and part of him told him he'd kick himself later when he finally remembered where it was from. It disappeared into Kari's pocket as she reached down to lift the little girl up so she could more easily reach the large mech, Trailbreaker, sitting on a boulder right next to them.

"Now, here's what I need you to do," Kari told the girl. "Just put your hand on the... nice machine man, and focus on the thought that you want to help him. He's protecting you and your family, you want him to succeed. You want him to succeed so much you'll help him as much as you can. All of it, everything," the teenager coaxed.

As she spoke, the child placed a hand on the warm metal and closed her eyes. Blue lightning sparked from the little girl's fingertips and out across the black armor of the mech holding their barrier up. The two bots exchanged a look and Trailbreaker looked down at his hands to see if anything had changed. "I don't... feel any different."

"Maybe it affects weapons like Leon's does," Arcee suggested.

Trailblreaker shrugged, transforming his hand into a cannon and taking a test shot at the ground farther away from them. "Nope. That was the same."

Kari handed the little girl back to her father as the child's eyes began to droop sleepily. "She needs to do that three or four more times for it to drain everything out of her," the teenager explained, stepping away from the family. She gestured at the two bots discussing things above them but didn't look up at them. "They will let you know when she stops glowing."

After that, the asian girl retreated from the others to stand a ways away and hug herself nervously. Leon followed, hoping to ease a bit of her tension.

"Well," he said after stopping beside her to stare at the family and bots. "That didn't seem so terribly complicated."

"That's not the complicated part."

"There's more?"

"Yeah," the girl replied, letting her arms fall to her sides and shuffling her feet. "This."

Without warning, the girl shot her hands forward as if flinging something Leon couldn't see toward the two bots still discussing what the artifact's power was. Instantly the pair crumpled like puppets with their strings cut, falling to the ground -thankfully away from the family- as the lights in their optics went out.

"What are yo-!?" Leon was halfway through turning around when something that felt like a sledgehammer slammed into the side of his head.

"Betraying you."

Those were the last words he heard before his head connected solidly with the hard packed dirt and Leon's head exploded in stars and darkness.

* * *

**A/N**** - **Hmm... interesting things are happening. This chapter was fun to write, I hope you guys had fun reading it too. :3

My apologies for any errors, I keep not having time to go back and edit the chapter because I'm a lazy slacker. Sorry guys. Anyway, thank you for reading, hope to see you all next week for the next chapter.


	15. Decepticon Girl

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Transformers.**_  
_**

**Chapter 15: D'awww, Leon, it's not your fault. Kari's a jerk-face. I blame Starscream.**

Kari flinched as needley numbness throbbed along her foot from the impact with the guy's head. Fortunately for him she hadn't been wearing her steel-toed boots. She brought her hand up to activate communicator/tracking device in her earring before speaking casually, "Hey, Screamo. I need a pick up at my location. If you hurry, you can get a three for one deal."

There was a brief crackle of static as the Decepticon second in command took over the frequency. "I told you to quit calling me that! And what right do you, you miserable little vermin, have to give orders to me?"

"Fine. Don't come," Kari replied nonchalantly. "You can explain to Megsy how you managed to lose not only the artifact you were sent to retrieve, but also the one you'd had to begin with. Not to mention the other two I've practically gift wrapped for you."

"I hate you."

"I love you too!" Kari chirped cheekily as she cut the power. She had to power her own devices or they'd fry whenever she exploded; but she didn't mind, most didn't need much power. She cackled gleefully at the sound of jet engines taking off around her and turned to scan the tree line for her seekers. She disliked being on the ground and couldn't wait to be up in the air again.

Movement out of the corner of her eye attracted Kari's attention, and she turned in time to see that other girl, the gimp, fall out of her crutches and onto the blue Autobot. The mirth died on Kari's lips as she remembered too late what that girl's artifact power had been. Lights flickered in the small bot's optics and Kari quickly changed her plans. She most definitely did not have enough energy for another electro-magnetic wave. She hadn't been entirely certain she'd stay up after that last one.

She turned and ran for the tree line, activating her commlink to Starscream. "Uh, hey, so something came up, and now I'm running for my life. Pick me up pretty please with a cherry on top?"

She was answered by an irritated groan. "Do you _ever_say anything that makes sense?"

Kari rolled her eyes, "Just come get me before this crazy motorcycle runs me over and you have to explain to Megatron why I'm dead."

"We're already on our way to you. ETA fifteen seconds. Do you need a line or can you jump?" this voice was different. Thundercracker, Kari knew.

Kari's head started to count down the instant the number was spoken. "I'll jump. Lines are for sissies."

She could see the cliff up ahead, a nice place to jump she noted in relief. Good job, Autobots, taking the high ground, she mused, made her life that much easier. The motorcycle noises were getting closer, but it didn't matter. The jets were over head and the cliff was right there. Skywarp was even already partially into a dive to catch her.

She didn't slow as she reached the edge, taking a flying leap out into the nothingness. Haha, she'd like to see those loser ground pounders follow her now; Autobots didn't fly, and it wasn't like they were crazy enough to jump from this height.

As if sensing her thoughts and purposefully throwing them back in her face, twin blurs of red and yellow launched themselves off the cliff after her. Kari could only watch, stunned, as the Lamborghinis transformed into mechs. The red one shot out a hand to catch her and Kari squeaked as the large metal fingers wrapped her tightly in a secure grip. She barely had the sense of mind to keep her arms free, but managed and then waited for the inevitable fall that was about to happen. Except it didn't.

"Ha! I got the squishy!" the large bot cheered in triumph, then he frowned. "Awww, man! I got the squishy...," he repeated in a much more disappointed tone. "Why do I always get stuck taking care of the organic?"

The yellow one just let out a laugh as it shot past its companion and rammed straight into the diving Skywarp. Watching the two spiral out of control and toward the distant ground below, Kari's captor grunted in frustration. "Sunny gets all the fun..."

Kari could only stare in shock at the device she had noticed on the back of the yellow mech. Outrage filled her as she flicked back on her comm. "Screamer! Why don't _I _have a jetpack?! No one told me you guys had jetpack technology!"

"How in the pit should I know!? Talk to Knock Out, _he's_in charge of your toys, not me!"

She turned to glare accusingly at the bemused mech holding her. "This is _not_fair."

"War isn't fair," came the sardonic reply. "You're surprisingly not afraid for someone being held this high up by a being five times their size."

"Afraid? Of you losers? Ha! Nah, I'm just distracting you so Jetfire can charge you from behind," Kari answered as if she were stating the weather. She did brace herself for impact though as the large jet collided with them. The force shook her to her teeth and she smiled through the pain as she forced air into her lungs enough to speak. "The skies belong to the seekers."

Already midway through transformation, Jetfire sank his claws into the jetpack and tore it from the mech's back. He then jumped off, changing back into vehicle mode, and matched speed as the red bot began to drop.

"You might survive the fall," Jetfire pointed out. "But she won't. Give her to me, please."

Snarling in frustration, Sideswipe released the organic into the open and waiting cockpit of the seeker. The girl smiled and waved to the falling mech as Jetfire's cables pulled her into the seat and he angled away. Kari didn't get to see the spectacular sight of mech impacting ground as the plane began pulling out of its dive, leaving her to struggle to stay conscious while her blood flowed back into her head. Giggling in a bout of light-headed giddiness, Kari rested her head on the control panel, patting the mech with a touch of affection. "My knight in shining armor..."

"I still can't believe Knock Out didn't find anything abnormal in your organic processor scans," the jet muttered.

"Ugh, no, I'm not getting another brain scan," Kari replied making a face. "How are the others doing?" She turned around in her seat to see if she couldn't find them.

"Sky!" she called out in surprise as she spotted the crippled plane being suspended between Starscream and Thundercracker.

"Sunstreaker practically tore off his wing before TC could shoot the bot off him,"Jetfire explained. "He's going to be stuck in Knock Out's care for a while."

"Ooooh, when I get my hands on that yellow one...," Kari seethed.

"Don't worry about it, we did far more damage to them than they did to us. What about you, did you sustain any damage?"

"Eh, mostly bruises. You know how the 'Bots are about humans."

"Great. Now we just get to tell Megatron about how we failed. Again."

"And who's fault was that, Jetfire?" Starscream growled over the intercom.

"Hey, I swear that 'Bot came out of nowhere and practically shot my face plates off!"

"Woah," Kari intervened before the argument could escalate. "Chill, guys. We didn't fail."

"What are you talking about? Obviously that human youngling isn't with us, the one we were sent to retrieve. That's practically the very definition of failure," Starscream pointed out.

"I'm shocked. You guys have such little faith in me!" Kari pouted with mock hurt. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the artifact amulet on a chain. "See? I couldn't bring the kid, so I got the next best thing. It's practically useless to us as it is, but at least the Autobots don't have it."

There was a thoughtful silence as the seekers processed this new information. "Think it's enough to keep Megatron from grounding us?" Thundercracker asked nervously.

Kari bit back a smile at the term 'grounding' coming fearfully from a nearly thirty foot tall giant robot. She had to remind herself that it meant something entirely different for a seeker than for a human kid.

"Possibly," Starscream answered pensively.

Kari snorted. "Just point out that you didn't want to have to house train a new human when we have a perfectly trained and well adjusted one already on base. With my help, I bet I could get Damian attuned to this thing in just a few months instead of the year it normally takes." A shudder passed through the jet beneath her and Kari frowned in confusion, but Jetfire didn't speak.

"Yes... and the boy is already attached to Jetfire," Starscream mused, pleased that the artifact powers would stay within the seekers' ranks.

With their decision made, the seekers continued their long flight to the nearest space bridge. Losing Skywarp had its distinct disadvantages such as longer travel time. Kari didn't mind though, flying was a lot better than being in that stuffy space ship. She sat back to stare up at the stars while she tried to puzzle out the best way to tell her little brother about all this.

* * *

**A/N - **Hmm... I didn't think this chapter would be so short. Oh well. It's fun writing from Kari's perspective, I'll have to make another chapter with her in it. Decepticons! Woo! Anyway, hope you all enjoyed the chapter. I ran out of pre-written ones so updates will probably slow. Sorry. :S

Thanks for reading! :3

-Py


	16. Responsibility, what's that?

**Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers.**

**Chapter 16: I vote we Jazz things up a bit...**

Leon was still kicking himself over what had happened the next morning as he nursed a major headache. How could someone possibly be working for the Decepticons? That was like signing up for your own destruction and the destruction of your entire race. It just didn't make any sense.

He wandered out to the backyard where Haydn had managed to convince Mirage to come down and let her clean him out by hand. Beyond them was the lounging area where they had dragged the big screen TV out of the house and set up the entertainment system outside. They were currently going through 'battle simulations', more commonly known as 'Halo 3', on the Xbox. It amused Leon that, while one of the better fighters in reality, Sideswipe just wasn't very good at the game.

"Oh, come on! What the slag was that? Sticky grenades? That's not even possible...," Sideswipe was muttering as Bluestreak snickered quietly to the side.

"They're plasma grenades, Sideswipe. They stick in this game, just go with it," Arcee explained, rolling her optics.

"That's not... That doesn't even make sense!"

"Mute it, whiner," Sunstreaker muttered from beside his twin. "Work with what you got. Now come help me ambush the midget."

"Hey!" Bumblebee shouted as his screen went red with the death message followed quickly by laughter.

"You guys do realize the point of the game is to get the flag, right?" Arcee asked, folding her arms over her chest plate.

"I thought this was 'combat simulation'," Blue murmured, frowning over at Sunstreaker as his screen lit up red. "Isn't that what you told Ironhide when he was here earlier?"

"It is, Blue, 'game' is the human word for it," Sideswipe growled back at him as a rocket to the face from Bee lit up his own screen.

They weren't playing with actual controllers, they just plugged right into the console with one of the many metal cables they all seemed to magically have an endless supply of. Which was fortunate because he was fairly certain all the controllers would have been broken by now. It was only the thought of not getting a new one that had saved the television from giant robot fury.

The family from the other night had been relocated to a new home across the country. Kari's advice on how to lessen and possibly completely remove the strong energy readings of the artifacts was proving to be correct. He wondered if she would be happy or angry at how much she'd actually managed to help them. The little girl was currently at the new location with her family and almost completely energy free. Trailbreaker and another bot named Brawn Leon had barely met before were stationed with them for protection.

Cliffjumper and a couple of Arcee's sisters, Chromia and Elita One, -and don't ask Leon how giant robots could have sisters, probably the same way Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were brothers- were currently out scouting other energy signals that could potentially resolve to be artifacts. Until they had a definite read on a new artifact, they were pretty much stuck babysitting alien death cars for a while. Haydn didn't seem to mind. She actually enjoyed giving them carwashes.

Leon walked over to the other side of the house where the new 'garage' was going to go. Grapple worked fast, and they supplied a lot of materials from their ship to build it. They had some form of subspace technology that allowed them to store large amounts of cargo in a relatively small space. They had tons of metal, and this garage was turning out to be almost as sturdy as a bomb shelter. At the rate they were building, the upper garage area would be finished in just a few days.

Grapple noticed the human coming and offered his palm to lift him up and out of the way. "What do you think? Magnificent, right?"

"Yeah, it's really something. You guys work fast," Leon commented from his new vantage point.

"It would go a lot faster if I could get an officer down here to delegate the work load," Grapple muttered, shooting a glare toward the back of the house where the others were playing video games.

"They that busy up there?" Leon asked. "Who's in charge down here, then?"

"They're not busy so much as being courteous toward the property owner who doesn't seem to like them very much. As for who's in charge, unofficially you are."

"Me?!" Leon sputtered.

"Yes. Haydn is really, but she's hardly the type to give orders, so the responsibility falls to you. This is your planet, we're just guests here."

"Me, give orders? I'm like a bug to you guys! Why would any of you listen to me?"

"Because the alternative is to be sent back to the ship and face the considerable wrath of the officers. At least half the reason Sideswipe and Sunstreaker are here is because Prowl isn't, I assure you."

Leon was silent as he absorbed that information. Now that he was thinking about it, he had already bossed the mechs around somewhat, and they had, for the most part, listened. Still, it was unnerving to have it so plainly pointed out to him.

"I... see..."

"Not that you haven't been doing a fine job of it, but if you could just say something to them about helping to build their own home...?" Grapple suggested hopefully.

"I'll see what I can do," he muttered, grimacing.

It was hard to not feel overwhelmed as he trudged back to where Haydn was still washing Mirage. The sleek featureless vehicle was hovering inches off the grass. Just high enough to keep from touching anything dirty as Haydn worked on the interior with a sponge.

Leon poked his head in with mild curiosity to get a proper look at the mysterious mech's inside as well as to get the girl's attention. Haydn looked up from what she was doing as his shadow fell across her and flashed a brief tight smile before returning to her task. From her, it was as much as a warm handshake. Leon took that as in invitation to stay, and sat down on the ledge of the hover car's opening remaining halfway outside the vehicle so Haydn still had plenty of space to work.

"So," he started after a moment of consideration. "I just heard something interesting from Grapple."

Haydn didn't give any noticeable response, but Leon knew she was listening.

"Apparently -according to him at least- since the Autobot officers aren't around down here to oversee their men, _I've_been put into the unofficial role as leader of this crazy alien death robot circus we've got going on here."

Haydn paused briefly in her scrubbing before continuing without comment.

"Yeah," Leon went on. "My thoughts exactly." He shook his head in bewilderment. He stared out across the yard to where the bots were still playing Xbox and thought briefly about getting the entertainment system a canopy so it'd be covered in case of rain before opening his mouth to speak again.

"Were you aware the officers are under the impression you aren't comfortable with them and stay away because of it? Are you uncomfortable with them? Because I'm not going to lie, I'd very much like someone down here to be in charge who isn't vulnerable to being squashed like a bug."

Haydn set the sponge down so she could pull her phone out of her pocket and send a reply.

**Haydn: I'm uncomfortable with everyone. : / But any Autobot is welcome down here so long as they leave the house alone. I didn't mean to make them feel unwelcome. **

"Great, I'll just pass the word along to them, then," Leon replied, relieved.

He cast about for something else to say to continue the conversation, but it didn't seem necessary. They lapsed into a comfortable silence while she went back to her cleaning, and he to his... staring off into space. He was idly wondering whether Mirage's interior was spacious enough for him to pick up a sponge and offer to help when a slight shift passed through vehicle beneath him.

Frowning, he noticed the other mechs stop what they were doing and freeze, as if listening to something. It lasted for only a second before they burst into a flurry of activity. They put down whatever they were holding and immediately shifted to their vehicle forms and headed for the trees. Confused, Leon opened his mouth to ask, but Mirage was already answering.

"Hound reports a vehicle with two organics approaching the property; estimated arrival in approximately three minutes. Orders?" Leon could hear the light amusement in the last word and he fought the urge to roll his eyes.

"I think you guys have the right idea. Just stay hidden and I'll go-," he was in the process of standing up when he felt a tug on the back of his shirt stopping him. He looked down curiously at the girl pulling him insistently back into the hover car.

"Or not... Haydn?" he asked, settling himself the rest of the way into the vehicle.

Mirage closed his doors while Haydn tapped out a response on her phone. The mech took the time to activate his cloak and glide over to watch the front of the house. Leon looked down from gawking at the interior display when his phone buzzed in his hand.

**Haydn: I don't want anyone to know anybody lives here. Please everyone just hide until they go away? :(**

**Hound: Consider it done.**

Leon looked up from the reply he was typing when the world around them shimmered and changed. The large alien footprints that had be gouged into the lawn disappeared, the half-built garage was replaced by it's old self, and even the atmosphere of the house looked more dark and empty. It was like an image of what the place had looked like before they'd arrived had been rolled over the top of it.

**Leon: Dang, Hound, is that you doing that? I knew you could do holograms, but this is just... wow.**

**Hound: It only covers visuals. If you want something more in depth you should talk to Prowl, or maybe Jazz. Otherwise all someone has to do to notice something odd is look at the liquid and energy consumption records.**

**Blue: Oh, I know! Smokescreen is really good at that sort of thing, hiding stuff and keeping it hidden, as well as finding hidden stuff people don't want found, which really tends to get people annoyed at him, but he'd be perfect for this. Though, on second thought, that might not be such a good idea 'cause Prowl doesn't like him since he and Jazz teamed up that one time to get those photos and Prowl probably won't let him out of stasis anytime soon.**

**Sides: Woah, wait, photos? Why wasn't I aware of this? Smokey's been holding out on us... Oh, and if we pull any bots out of stasis it'll be the seekers. I'm tired of taking pot shots from slaggers like Skywarp.**

**Leon: Stasis? Seekers?**

Leon was only partially paying attention to the conversation as their visitors had arrived by then. It was a police car, and Leon briefly wondered if they were coming for him. He discarded that thought when he looked over at Haydn and saw her sitting rigidly on the cab floor. Her wide eyes were glued to the black and white cruiser parking in front of the house.

**Hound: Stasis is essentially going offline for a long period of time to conserve energon and space. The ship just isn't large enough to have everyone online at once so we put some guys in stasis that weren't essential or wouldn't have handled the trip well. Like the Seekers. They're fliers, and are all notoriously claustrophobic. Cloudraker especially so, which was why we had to put him and, by extension, his entire trine into stasis for the trip.**

**Sides: And now that we have a ground base for them with open sky above it, there's no reason to be keeping them in stasis.**

**Grapple: Well, we _would_ have a ground base if certain bots would stop by to help work on it every once in a while. At this rate it won't be habitable for at least an orn, maybe two.**

Leon only browsed through their comments while simultaneously keeping an eye on what was going on outside with the police officers. He did pick out the terms he wasn't familiar with to ask about them. Eventually he'd figure out giant death robot lingo.

**Leon: Trine? Orn?**

He looked up to see the police visit come to an anticlimactic end after they received no response from ringing the doorbell. They peered into a few windows, and one went around the entire house before coming back and shaking his head at his partner. Then they both drove off without further incident. He shot Haydn a questioning glance, but her eyes were still watching the cruiser disappear down the road.

**Bee: An orn is about two Earth weeks. A trine is... well... I'm not actually sure how to explain that. Anyone?**

**Hound: I just think of them as the units of three seekers work in and try not to compute too much on it.**

**Sides: Kind of like me and Sunny but... not.**

**Arcee: Only a seeker could really answer that question. Chromia, Elita and I are bonded as a three part unit, but that's still not the same as a seeker trine.**

**Jazz: Man, you guys can do better than that. : / **

**Bee: Jazz? O.o**

**Hound: You're not supposed to hack into their phones, Jazz. You're the one who gave that order. Now I have to report you to... well... you.**

**Jazz: Consider me reported. :3**

**Hound: And then you're supposed to report it to Prowl, but somehow I doubt this is going to make it to his desk.**

**Jazz: And you'll never know. The information that passes between me and Prowler is strictly classified. Now, 'Raj, you've been too quiet for your own good, why don't you go ahead and explain what a seeker trine is to our human friends?**

**Mirage: Must I?**

**Jazz: You gonna make me make it an order?**

**Mirage: That won't be necessary. A seeker is a specific model of Cybertronian design for aerial combat. It's hardwired into their programing to naturally find and bond with two other seekers to form what is called a 'trine'. The exact nature of the bond is unknown, but is believed to assist them in their aerial combat maneuvers so they can communicate soundlessly with one another and know instinctively where each other are to better coordinate their attacks. Is this answer sufficient or should I continue?**

**Jazz: Nah, you're good.**

**Sides: You left out the part where they're all insane. That being said, I'd like to go back to the part where we have Jazz admitting he's broken a rule and has yet to receive punishment. I mean, if any of us had done the same thing, we'd be in deep slag right now.**

**Jazz: You're absolutely right, Sideswipe, what was I thinking? There _are_ punishments that need to be dealt out to certain rule breakers. : /**

**Sides: Scrap.**

**Jazz: Yep, and Prowler sent me down here to tell you guys -Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Arcee, Bumblebee- that your punishment is to report to Grapple during the human's recharge cycle until further notice. Prowl also told me to report back to the Ark afterward, but, oh my, I seem to have broken a rule and must be punished as well. Looks like Prowler will have to deal without me for a while.**

**Sides: That's not a punishment for you! That's a vacation!**

**Jazz: I didn't come up with it, Prowl did. If you want to be the one to tell Prowler his punishment isn't fair, you're going to have to give me time to figure out how to make energon popcorn 'cause I'd like to see that.**

**Sides: Energon... popcorn...? What?**

**Jazz: But we're being rude. Haydn, I'd like to formally apologize for my intrudance into your privacy. I was just feeling left out 'cause y'all were having a conversation without me. Forgive me? *puppy dog eyes***

**Sides: What the frag do organic optics have to do with anything?**

Leon typed out a quick reply before the conversation could get any longer; the mechs sometimes forgot it took organics a while to read and respond to their texts.

**Leon: Just a sec, guys. Haydn needs time to read it all first.**

Haydn was already scanning through everything when he looked over at her. Her expression didn't change much, a slight tightening of her mouth and a widening of her eyes and then she was typing out a reply. They both looked up when Mirage began moving, but Haydn went back to her reply after just a brief glance.

**Haydn: It's okay. This was supposed to be a conversation with everyone anyway.**

**Leon: Okay, I have to ask, where did you learn 'puppy dog eyes' from? **

**Jazz: Internet. It was either that or 'Bambi' eyes and I wasn't sure what a 'Bambi' was.**

**Hound: Jazz has always been quick to adapt.**

Mirage came to a halt in the backyard where they'd started and politely, yet pointedly, opened his doors. "The cleanser is drying and leaving a film on my interior. Remedy it, please."

Leon climbed out and helped Haydn down so she could finish rinsing and drying the mech out. He would have stayed to help, but there was a shiny new Pontiac making its way toward them and he felt he'd probably be more useful dealing with that instead.

"Mind tellin' me why you two aren't too keen on talkin' to the cops? Ya know, besides the alien cars in your backyard," the Solstice questioned, opening a door for him to get in.

"I know why I'm cop shy, but that shouldn't apply here on the west coast," Leon answered, climbing in. "I don't know what's going on with Haydn."

"Then, why don't we share stories? You tell me what happened with you and the twins, and I'll tell ya what Bumblebee told us about her," the car offered, closing the door and starting toward the front of the house.

"You didn't get the story from them already?" Leon asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No. Prowl's usually the one who pins 'em down for debriefings and they've been hiding from him. I figure it'll just be easier on all of us if I get it from you 'til Prowler can corner 'em."

"Ah, that makes sense. Where are we going?" the human asked, leaning forward to peer through the windows as Jazz sped up along the road.

"Dunno. It's my first time out of the Ark in a long while. I wanna take a drive 'n enjoy the air. I drive, you talk. We'll switch when you're done, deal?"

"Me, drive you?"

"'long as ya don't drive me off a cliff," the Pontiac replied, chuckling at Leon's incredulous tone.

"Deal!" the human blurted out and then proceeded to tell the mech everything that had happened since that terrible day he'd first spotted the cherry red Lamborghini.

* * *

**A/N - **Here we go, this chapter is a decent length. I'll work on keeping them all this sized. Sorry about the lack of action in this chapter. The next one doesn't have much action in it either, but it's got Kari so hopefully that'll make up for it. Both sides are kind of licking their wounds and searching for the next artifact. They'll pick up again, I promise. Artifact five will be good times.

Anyway. Thanks for reading. I lurv you all. :)

-Py


	17. Show no weakness

Disclaimer:I do not own Transformers.

**Chapter 17: The other side of the mirror**

Kari woke up in a worse state than Leon had. Her head throbbed, her ribs felt like they'd been squeezed in a trash compactor, and she was covered from head to toe in scrapes and bruises. On top of all that, she absolutely needed to hurl right then and there. At the very least, she managed to squirm free of her little brother curled up next to her and found her shirt from the night before to catch the mess.

The nausea was a side effect of the enhanced nutrient slurry Shockwave injected her with once a week so they didn't need to feed her. It also boosted her immune system, strength, endurance and whatever else the crazy son of a glitch had cooked into his latest batch. Kari had stopped listening to his mad prattle months ago. Her brother wasn't affected nearly as badly as she was, thankfully. He seemed to have a tolerance for it.

Of course that only made the scientist even more curious about how one human could get sick from something and another didn't, and they'd gone through a long series of 'tests' before he'd found his answer. Something he'd explained to her but she'd stopped listening to his sciencey talk about four words in.

Now she only saw Shockwave once a week for her injection and even that was far too frequently for her liking. Slagger was cold. The first week they'd abducted her, Kari spent it strapped to a table in his lab watching him cut open live humans to figure out how they worked. After they first few, he'd figured out how to sedate them so they bled out slower. He did things to them. Things that would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life and she badly wished she could forget them.

She was only grateful her brother had been unconscious for that. He'd been unconscious for about the first year or so of their captivity; in some sort of 'stasis' they called it. It meant he hadn't aged or changed at all in that one year, and by the time he'd woken up she'd managed to get a strenuous hold on their situation.

Show no weakness. That was the number one rule of surviving here, she knew, and the same philosophy that made her struggle to her feet and toss the soiled shirt into the incinerator they used as a toilet. She had clothes, tons of clothes; even if they were all the same outfit. They'd made her hundreds of replicas of the clothing they'd abducted her in. Some black and purple monstrosity from her gothic phase she'd grown to hate.

Yet to admit her hatred would be to admit weakness, and she _would:_Show. No. Weakness.

She stripped and stepped into the enclosed space that served as the shower, stifling a yelp as the scalding hot water hit her bruised and battered skin. Injuries were normal for her. One did not live with giant homicidal sadistic robots and live life unscathed. No, it was the cracked ribs she'd gotten from Jetfire's impact with that red Autobot that were new. Made it difficult to breathe, but she'd have to deal with it. Going to Doctor Knockout would just get her sent to Shockwave, and ending up on Shockwave's lab table was at the top of her never-to-repeat experiences.

She stepped out of the shower a new girl. She dressed in a fresh set of hideous black and purple garments, shredding up an extra outfit to wrap her ribs up underneath to help them heal, and proceeded to pin up her hair with the precious few remaining bobby pins she had left. Her make up supplies had dried up ages ago, or she'd use it to cover the dark rings forming under her eyes. Not that alien robots would care about that sort of thing.

Kari went over to prod her brother awake with a foot. "Up, lazy bones."

A muffled groan wafted from the nest of fabric that served as their bed and the boy burrowed further into the cloth folds. "It's toooo eeaaarlyyyyy..."

"Yeah, well, if you want to be an artifact you need to start the same routine I do every morning. Sound body, sound mind, and one-ness with the power within and all that scrap. Cheesy as the pit, but it works." Mercilessly, the teenager reached down to yank the covers off him and booted him hard enough to send the boy sprawling.

"Graaar... you're so mean!" Damian growled at her, sitting up.

"Yep, and we haven't even started the real work yet. Now get showered and dressed," she ordered in her best big-sister voice. He muttered something profane as he sulked past her, earning himself a slap across the back of his head. "Make sure you wash that dirty mouth out while you're in there."

A slight whirring noise of disapproval came from the white and red mech that strode into the room, not looking up from his datapad. "Then it seems your own mouth could do with a bit of washing."

"Jetfire!" Damian cried, taking a running leap off the counter.

Deftly, the seeker extended a palm out to catch the boy, careful to mind his sharp claws. "As amusing as it is to hear your sister's pump falter and to see her skin turn those odd colors, I do believe I've told you not to do that."

"Aw, bolts. She knows I'm safe, she does it all the time," Damian muttered as he was set back down next to Kari.

"I know. I keep hoping her particular brand of insanity is not a trait the two of you share," the jet spoke dryly. Jetfire took a seat on his berth, still focused on the datapad in his hands. That wasn't uncommon, it seemed that mech was always reading something.

Even after bunking with the large and unusually solitary red and white seeker for over a year, Kari still didn't understand him. The only reason she was stuck in his room was because he was the only one who hadn't actively protested the idea. Merely shrugged as if he didn't care, which had pretty much been his attitude toward her since.

Except for the odd possessiveness he showed occasionally when she least expected it. Like when that red Autobot had hold of her and he'd tackled him. He hadn't been in nearly such a hurry to rescue her from that invisible bot. She just couldn't understand it. Not that it mattered, she'd long since stopped trying.

"Damian. Shower," Kari prompted her brother again with a scowl.

"Alright, alright, I'm going! Sheesh...," the preteen muttered before pausing to regard the mech one last time. "Jetfire, my sister is trying to kill me, just thought you should know that."

"Hm," came the seeker's less than interested reply. He'd long since stopped taking comments like that from the organics seriously.

Kari waited for the water in the washroom to start before she turned her attention fully to the mech in the room. She'd learned something useful during her stay here about seekers. The quickest way to lose their respect was to display a fear of heights. The quickest way to earn respect was to be a flightless organic that randomly threw itself off high places with reckless abandon.

Not that they ever viewed her as anything close to an equal. No, it just meant she went from 'disease ridden vermin they were forced to put up with' to 'amusing pet glitch-mouse that sometimes did silly tricks'. A status that she'd worked hard to earn, and was still working on sustaining. Which was why she backed up a few steps and took her own running leap.

It was different when she did it than when her little brother did it. He didn't have metal tipped gloves and steel-toed boots he could magnetize at a thought to grip metal surfaces better. None of the other Decepticons took the same care not to drop them that Jetfire did, and being able to stick to them like a gecko had saved her from more than a few potentially lethal fumbles.

Her precautions proved as unnecessary as ever on Jetfire as he caught her with the same perfect precision he'd shown on every other occasion before. He then proceeded to dump her onto the shelf next to him as carelessly as before. Never once had his optics left the datapad in his palm.

So far Jetfire had proven to be the one exception to the 'make crazy jumps and get respect' rule. If anything, it made him even less impressed with her. Which frustrated Kari to no end, yet she forced herself not to show it. Instead, she settled down to sit on the ledge of the small shelf, kicking her heels back in forth as she tried to read over Jetfire's shoulder. She balanced herself as precariously as she dared and put on one of her 'crazy' smiles.

"Wacha doin'?"

"Nothing that wouldn't bore you into a processor crash."

"Try me?"

"No."

She pouted and inwardly growled in further frustration. Not even showing interest in his interests was working. Oh well, she'd have to just come out and ask the question and hope he didn't get angry at her. She was just grateful that Jetfire was more likely to get up and leave than lash out if he was annoyed by her.

"So... how's Skywarp doing?"

That elicited more of a reaction than usual. He actually looked at her. "... severely damaged, but stable. Knock Out is still working on him. Tread lightly around Thundercracker and Starscream for the time being."

"Well, duh," she snorted, rolling her eyes. Seeker trines... the bond between them was something not to be messed with; Kari had picked up on that fast. She let out a melodramatic sigh. "When will he be well enough to fly? I hate being cooped up in here."

He turned back to his datapad, and Kari fought not to grind her teeth. She'd lost him again, and she combed over her words carefully to figure out what exactly she had done to get his interest in the first place.

"A few solar cycles, days, and he'll be back on duty, I'm sure."

"Good. Screamer's cranky enough without adding a downed trine-mate to the mix," Kari muttered. She winced when she remembered too late that Starscream and Jetfire were friends. She shot Jetfire a sideways glance, but he gave no reaction. Seriously... she just did not understand this mech.

With nothing left to talk about, and her brother getting out soon, she took the only path back to their counter that didn't involve asking for help. She pitched forward off the shelf, magnetizing the metal studs on her shoes as she swung her feet back. It was months of practice at suppressing her pain that kept her from screaming as her cracked ribs protested the sudden shift in gravity.

_No weakness._

She smiled instead, walking along the bottom of the shelf toward the wall. Transferring between the two surfaces was another exercise self-control, but she managed to get herself sliding down the metal wall toward the floor. Sliding was less agonizing than climbing.

A large metal hand intercepted her descent and she barely managed to turn her grunt of pain into one of annoyance as she landed on it. With his own whirr of irritation, Jetfire reached over to deposit the girl unceremoniously onto the countertop.

"You are distracting me from my work. Stay over there," the seeker growled at her before going back to whatever it was he was doing on that datapad.

She stuck her tongue out at him while he wasn't looking, and sat down gingerly on the wad of cloth that served as both their bed and seating cushion. Her brother was just coming out of the shower, and she was anxious to begin his training. She'd been given two months to get him ready, and Megatron was not someone you could afford to disappoint.

At least Damian had a head start in training. It was a family tradition, one of the many reasons she'd grabbed her brother and fled to the other side of the world. To her sixteen year old mind it had seemed like the perfect solution to the hellish life they'd lived. Until a possessed jet swooped out of the air and snatched them up.

She fingered the jade dragon figurine that pressed tightly against her neck. The reason for all of the problems in her life. Part of her wanted to tear it off and throw it down the incinerator, but she doubted that would destroy it. The gemstone had so far proven indestructible. Besides, she would most certainly be killed if she didn't have it.

Memories of her father sitting across from her while they prepared to meditate while droning on and on about the importance of 'oneness with the power within' made her scowl. She was going to have to do the exact same thing with her brother, and that did not make her happy. At least he wanted to become an artifact, Kari had been too young to know what she wanted when she'd gone through her attunement.

Not that they had the luxury of being able to choose while being held captive by extremely hostile giant alien robots.

So with that cheerful thought in mind, she jumped her barely dressed brother and dragged him off for beginning stretches. They had their work cut out for them if they were going to make the two month deadline.

They were still at it an hour later when Jetfire quit the room. He had gathered enough information and it was time to research the next step in his plan; and for that he needed Shockwave's lab.

* * *

**A/N: **Sorry this took so long, I got distracted with other writings, though nothing really serious. Just little drabbles that demanded to be typed out but will probably never see the light of the internet because they are too crazy. The next chapter shouldn't take me so long to write. :3

Hopefully the next chapter I write with Kari in it will have more of the Decepticons in it. This was mostly an intro to the complicated twisted world Kari lives in. She's not exactly sorry about the things she does, but she's not happy to have to do them either. She mostly just does what she has to to survive, and if she allowed herself to think about it more, she'd probably collapse into a weeping heap of mental breakdown. And oh-noes what is Jetfire planning? It's probably not that hard to guess... XD

-Py


	18. Space bridge

**Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers. I only own my OC's, which are not nearly as cool. D: **

**Chapter 18 - This is what happens when you stick Jazz on a ship for years with not much outlet for his energies...**

The day they completed the space bridge in the secret underground base built under the garage, was the same day they saw a distinct increase in space robot traffic. It started with a black and white mech with police decals coming out of the garage to stand in front of Jazz. Leon was sitting next to the Solstice when the stoic mech joined them.

He spoke one word. "Jazz."

"Somebody's in trooouble," the silver bot sing-songed, standing up with a gleefully devious grin. "Who're we huntin' today, Sherlock Prowl?"

"The usual," came the deadpan reply.

"Oh goodie! Punishin' da twins is what Jazzes and Prowlers do best! Be back in a jiffy, Leo, duty calls," Jazz called back as he practically skipped after his monochromatic partner.

"I've told you not to call me that," the stoic mech spoke, his voice continually void of any emotion Leon could see.

"Have you?" Jazz mused.

"Yes. Three million nine hundred eighty-six thousand three hundred forty-two times. Including this one."

"So close to the big four mill! Ya know, I think I'll throw a party to commemorate the event."

Leon didn't get to hear the reply as the two mechs walked out of sight and hearing range. He'd been gradually coming to the conclusion that Jazz wasn't the most commanding of the commanding officers. It'd all started when he'd finally gotten sick of Sideswipe coming to him to ask permission for one of his ridiculous ideas to stave off boredom.

"Why are you even asking me? Jazz is here, isn't he like your commanding officer or something? Go ask him!"

"Wait, wait, wait, waaaaaaait a second here, let me get this straight. You mean if I get Jazz to say it's okay, it's okay?"

"Uh... ye-"

"Great! No take backs!"

Leon would have had to have been an idiot to not realize he'd made some sort of terrible mistake as the Lamborghini practically spun out in his rush to leave.

That ruling had made it a whole four hours before Leon caught Sideswipe trying to shove a reluctant Bumblebee into some device he'd dubbed his 'minibot-a-pult'. ("What? There's a lake over there, it's perfectly safe!")

Leon wasn't left alone to his thoughts for long before another mech emerged from the garage, this one the familiar red and white medic. He made a beeline straight for Leon.

"We're planning on taking the seekers out of stasis today and to do that we need to bring them down here. Thought I should let you know before you started having jets flying overhead," Ratchet informed him.

"Jets?" Leon blinked.

"Yes, seekers typically transform into 'jets'- at least that's the closest human approximate. Don't worry, though, they roam a lot; and prefer to stay up in the air. Except for Fastlane, he has a habit of taking ground alt forms sometimes; and Twilight's social so you'll probably see her most often. Cloudraker, though, he'd stay airborne all orn if he didn't have to come down to refuel and recharge every once in a while."

"So... really only one of them will be out of my hair most of the time?" the human asked, a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

Ratchet paused. "I'd think they'd be much too large to be _in_your hair in the first place."

"Figure of speech, Ratch," Leon muttered. "So I'll still have two jets to worry about? I suppose if one is a car that's not really any different than having any other bots around."

"Well, he'll be a car, yes," the medic replied. Then added, "With jet engines."

Leon blinked again, and didn't say anything for a moment while he took time to process that. "Really? I don't suppose there's any way I could just flat out refuse to allow him a ground form and make him stay in the sky? I really don't want to be answering strange questions about a car with jet engines."

"It wouldn't be the first time he's had such restrictions. We've had... incidents in the past."

"Then let's do that. He's not going to be happy about it, is he? Is that okay?"

"It better be," Ratchet growled ominously. "I'll tell Prowl to make it an order. He won't know you requested it. Fastlane isn't exactly a vengeful mech, trine-mate matters excluded, but he wouldn't be unlikely to hold a grudge either."

Leon nodded and followed the medic as he led the way to where another mech, the one Leon was coming to know as the infamous Wheeljack, was pulling a large flat bedded trailer of sorts. Loaded on it were three bots that looked like they belonged in the air.

All three had thrusters on their feet, or peds as Leon had been corrected before, and triangular 'wings' attached to their backs. Their fingers ended in sharp claws; a feature Leon had previously thought of as a 'Decepticon-thing' until he'd seen Jazz's claws and now these 'seekers' had them as well.

The two larger ones were obviously mechs, and looked almost identical to one another. The two were mostly red with some grey accenting and looked to be about the same height as most of the other 'average' sized bots, but definitely built lighter.

The third was femme built even lighter, and much smaller than her two companions. Close to the height of Bumblebee, she was dwarfed by the larger mechs beside her. She was a more flashy metallic purple, and had grey accents like the other two.

Leon sincerely hoped they weren't nearly as troublesome as they looked.

A few other bots came out to watch while Ratchet and Wheeljack went about doing whatever it was they needed to do to bring the motionless flyers back to life. Jazz appeared to speak briefly with Wheeljack in Cybertronian before sidling over to take a seat next to Leon, lifting him up onto a knee so the human could get a better look.

"What was that about," Leon asked the Solstice as he watched the engineer excuse himself and head back toward the garage.

"You'll see," the mech replied vaguely. "The twins haven't been respondin' ta normal deterrences, so Prowl's allowin' me ta get... creative wit' their punishment. Speakin' of creative punishments..."

The silver mech tilted his head to the side, a gesture Leon had learned to associate with them opening a private link to another bot, and called out, "Hey, 'Raj. I got a job for ya. Come to my location in a few breems."

There was a brief pause for a response the human couldn't hear, then Jazz returned his attention to Leon. "Not that 'Raj really did any'ting that deserves punishin', 'sides bein' a stick in the mud, I just like messin' with 'im."

"Uh-huh. Remind me to never get on your bad side."

Jazz chuckled ominously, regarding the human with a significant look. "Trust me, you've not yet seen what I do to da guys on my 'bad side.'"

A few other mechs had wandered over while Ratchet had been making his preparations, and Bluestreak came over to sit next to them.

"Hi, Leon, Jazz! It'll be great to have the seekers active again, don't you think? We've been at such a disadvantage without them, it'll be good to even out the battlefield. Speaking of evening things out, we should look into pulling Blaster and his symbiotes out of stasis as well. Soundwave is hard to combat without-"

"Yeah, Blue, I already brought that up wit' Prowler and Optimus," Jazz interrupted. "It's still under discussion. Energon's pretty tight right now, gotta watch our consumption rates."

Blue nodded and let the conversation fall to silence. They all turned their attention over to where Ratchet was hooking up a cable of some sort from his wrist to the wrist of one of the seekers. The purple femme, Leon realized.

Nothing happened for a short time, Ratchet stood still and silent beside an equally still and silent metallic form. Then, suddenly, the femme jolted as if from a huge surge of electricity and Ratchet quickly detached himself from her, taking several steps back.

The bot leapt up, her body whirling and contorting in a complex series of maneuvers that left her in the form of a small jet. A jet that ignited it's rockets before gravity could claim it and took off straight into the sky before anyone could stop it. Once it broke the tree cover it vanished into thin air, though Leon could still hear the sound of jet engines retreating into the distance.

"Was... was that supposed to happen?" the human asked, frowning upwards.

"Yep," Jazz replied.

Ratchet harrumphed, "At least I managed to upload a basic language pack and a brief overview of our current status on this planet before she came online."

"She'll be back after she gets some time in the air," Jazz explained. "Seekers are already uneasy when on the ground, wakin' up in a new place on top of that tends to send 'em over the edge. S'why we didn't wanna wake 'em up on the Ark."

"She'd better be back soon," Ratchet grumbled as he began preparing the two mechs for their own revival. "She needs to help her brothers get their alt modes."

"Uhm, Jazz-," Bluestreak began, looking over at Leon worriedly; but the other mech cut him off with a sigh.

"I know, Blue," the visored bot replied, "Leon, you may wanna find a different spot ta watch from. Blue an' I are 'bout to get bombed by a whirlwind of high speed Twilight. Might not be safe for ya."

"Not safe at all," the sniper agreed, offering Leon a hand. "Seekers are all usually pretty high geared, and Twilight more so than any other! Add on top of that the extra energy from the jump start she needed to get out of stasis and she probably won't be in any state of mind to notice things like little fragile organics. Er, not that there's anything wrong with being little. Or fragile. Or an organic. I just meant I didn't want you to accidentally get hurt. Twilight wouldn't want you to get hurt either so it really is for the best if you stay here under these trees and wait until she's calmed down some or-"

All while the large silver mech had been talking, Leon had climbed onto the offered hand and been transferred to a copse of some tree or other a respectable distance away. He'd been waiting for a lull in Bluestreak's speech to ask a couple of the questions he had, but he never got the chance before something very purple, traveling very fast, slammed itself straight into Jazz.

"Jazzy-wazzy!"

Leon scrambled to brace himself against a tree as the ground shook from the impact. Jazz had been prepared and braced himself to turn the femme's momentum into something like a spin. It looked remarkably like what Leon might do with one of his little nieces on greeting them. Picking them up and twirling them around... only much larger and with a kid traveling with the same force of a train.

"Twiley-wiley!" Jazz replied in an amused tone. Then the words flowed from the little femme's mouth like what Leon imagined Bluestreak might sound like if he could ingest a tanker full of coffee.

"Have-you-SEEN-this-place?-It's-absolutely-amazing!-The-sky-is-all-bright-blue,-BLUE-Jazz!-So-blue-you-can't-see-the-stars-and-these-white-water-vapor-things-that-drift-around-and-do-fun-things-when-you-fly-through-them-and-oh-my-goodness-there-are-_flying-_organics.-FLYING!-They-are-so-cute-and-little-and-fly-without-engines-and-have-these-special-wings-that-lift-AND-propel-just-by-moving-them-it's-BRILLIANT!"

There was only a split second of silence as she paused long enough for her head to whip around and notice Bluestreak attempting to get a decent distance away from where Leon was taking refuge. He was not as quick as Jazz to catch the high speed seeker and was knocked off his feet, landing a good fifty yards from where he'd been.

"Baby Blue! Look how _big_you've gotten!"

The grunt that Bluestreak replied with was as close to annoyed sounding as Leon had ever heard from the silver sniper. "I haven't grown in _vorns_, Twilight. I'm the same size I was the last time you saw me and the thousands of times you've seen me before that!"

"Yeah, but I just keep remembering you when you were little and now you're like twice my size!"

Bluestreak was trying to pry the femme off him but wasn't having much luck; and Leon was attempting to hold back laughter as images of a little silver baby bot flitted through his head. He lost it completely when his mind began automatically adding pacifiers and baby bonnets into the mix. His snickering hadn't been that loud, yet a set of wide optics snapped around to fixate on him.

Leon froze.

Twilight gaped in open astonishment as she began to disentangle herself from Bluestreak. The sniper glanced over to verify what she was staring at and snatched a limb to stop her before she could rush over and possibly trample the poor boy.

"Is-that-one-of-those-smart-organic-thingies?-Humans!-Yeah-is-that-a-human?-I-saw-a-bunch-while-flying-they-cover-this-planet-like-bugs.-Are-they-bugs?-They're-so-little-and-numerous.-Do-they-have-a-hive-mind?-Do-they-lay-eggs-in-your-processor-and-EEP!"

White and red hands reached over to lift the small femme off of Bluestreak and turn her around so she was facing the stern scowl of the chief medical officer. "Twilight. I haven't cleared you yet for release. Get back over there so I can run some diagnostics and-"

"But-Ratch-look!-A-human!-I-wanna-see-!" she protested, trying to squirm free of his grasp to get another look at Leon.

"Yes, yes, a human. You can talk Leon's audios off all you want later, right now I need to get you and your brothers online and operational," he muttered, carrying the small seeker easily away toward the two prone forms.

Leon let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and shot Jazz an uneasy glance. "Is she always like this?"

He honestly hoped not. He didn't think he could handle the hyperactive high-speed child bot he'd just witnessed.

"Nah, not really," Jazz answered with a shrug. "I don't think she'd've really hurt ya. It's just the effects of bein' jolted outa stasis leavin' 'er with more energy than usual that makes accidents more likely."

"Sorry, I meant to stay quiet but that comment about baby giant robots caught me by surprise. For some reason it never occurred to me that you guys were once children." Leon shrugged up at them.

"If ya want, I bet I have some pictures stored in my archives somewhere," Jazz offered as Blue let out a yelp-sputter sound of protest.

"No! Jazz, not those. Please not those!"

"Aw, c'mon, Blue. You an' Prowler were adorable!"

Leon glanced between the two of them, sending Bluestreak an apologetic look. "Sorry, Blue, I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to see them."

"See, Blue? You're deprivin' Leo here of the perfect opportunity ta learn about our culture!" Jazz prodded the sniper none too gently and the silver mech hunched low grumbling something about the universe hating him.

Jazz chuckled and was about to do something with a panel on his arm, when they were interrupted by another set of jet engines roaring to life. They looked over to see one of the red seekers repeat the same actions Twilight had upon waking; except right before they could take off, Twilight leapt at them, latching onto their wings.

"Woo-hoo! Let's go for a ride, 'Lane!"

The two spiraled upward in a series of maneuvers that would have torn a normal jet to pieces and disappeared out of sight. Ratchet could be seen shaking his head and muttering something next to the last seeker.

"I think I see what Sideswipe meant when he called them all crazy," Leon commented.

"You'll note that no one refuted him at da time," Jazz replied with a grin."They ain't so bad, really. Once they calm down some, anyway."

"That's very reassuring," Leon replied with about as much conviction as a lamp post.

"You'll see," Jazz answered with a chuckle. "Now I do recall promisin' ya some pics of Blue, here..."

"Aw, scrap," the sharp-shooter muttered and sank lower into his slouch as the inevitable slide-show of doom began.

* * *

**A/N – **Sooo yeah... it's been a while. Sorry. D: I've been distracted with other things. Helping my mom out since she sprained her ankle badly, helping some family friends build a house and possibly getting distracted by that crazy other fic that doesn't even have enough of a beginning to post but sure has a ton of entertaining middle... heck it's got like three different stories just set in the same Trans AU. Maybe I'll do that and just post three different stories? Eh... maybe.

Oh look, new faces... I like the seekers, they amuse me. Speaking of seekers, there will be more Decepticons to come next chapter. Like, actual stuffs with Jetfire and Skywarp and things; not just a bunch of Kari's insanity. So, hopefully people with enjoy that. I'm not very good at writing Decepticons, I much prefer mechs like Jazz or Sideswipe; but I suppose practice makes perfect? I guess we'll find out. :S

Anyway, thanks for waiting. Until next time!

-Py


End file.
